


The Forgotten Goddess

by HomuraBakura



Series: The Lost Chapters of Arca [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Background Zarc/Ray, Blood, Depictions of Physical Torture, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-06-23 22:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15615966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomuraBakura/pseuds/HomuraBakura
Summary: After effectively killing the only one she loves and fleeing to the corners of the earth with what remains of him, Ray, the former Goddess of Creation, attempts to make a quiet life for herself.  But she can still hear the prayers of the faithful, and when she hears one that frightens her, she goes to investigate - sending her into a tumultuous journey to return home while she learns of what's become of humanity since her retreat.





	1. ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hey hey~ What's up y'all! I promised ages ago that I would be posting some extra short stories to go along with _Where Demons Go to Die_ and the wait is finally over! We'll be starting here, with a prequel story about Ray. Thank you guys so much for your patience in waiting for these long-promised omake, and I hope you'll enjoy diving into this world with me again!

The prayers were getting noisier and noisier.

Ray grit her teeth against the clutter of thoughts in her brain, trying to focus on her rake.  She was adding a new squash patch to this end of the garden, and the ground needed to be prepared.  Normally, the work would help her ignore the voices in her head. It was back breaking, sweaty, and required her to focus on the burning strain of her muscles.  Even if she had had the power once again to form this garden with a thought, she wouldn’t have. She liked the burning sensation that came with working her body.

Today, however, it wasn’t enough.  She fought through it for a few more hours, raking and laying down her homemade fertilizer and starting on the seeds.

_ Goddess, please bless us with your strength and courage. _

_ Goddess, grant us protection in the coming fight. _

_ Goddess, send us your wisdom and understanding. _

“Shut UP!”

The words ripped out of her before she could stop them, and as soon as they did, the heaviness claimed her.  Desperation clawed at her chest from her beating heart, and with a cry, she flung her hoe as far as she could, so that it hit the side of the shed and made an echoing clatter against the distant mountainsides.  She crushed her hands against the sides of her head, plugging her fingers into her ears, but it wouldn’t, couldn’t, block out the voices in her head.

“I don’t care!  I don’t care! Shut up!  Shut  _ up _ !! Leave me alone,  _ please! _ ”

A faint groan cut through even her panic, and immediately she dropped her hands from her ears, whipping around towards the house.

Zarc had fallen from his chair.

Ray leaped full across the next garden patch, bolting for Zarc’s side.  Her love lay on the ground, still staring blankly at nothing, his breaths thin and choked.  His hands were twitching, and faint tears leaked from the corners of his otherwise expressionless eyes.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Ray whispered, stroking his hair.  “Zarc, sh, it’s okay, I’m here.”

Sometimes his episodes were worse than this; all things considered, this wasn’t bad.  He didn’t flail, didn’t open his mouth wide in a silent scream, didn’t sob so that he choked.  He just laid there, limp, hands twitching, tears leaking down his cheeks. She gathered his head into her lap, holding him lightly and stroking his hair until the episode passed.

She didn’t know why the episodes happened.  In all honesty, she couldn’t be sure why Zarc was still alive, when his soul had been fractured and removed from him.  What tiny slip of life still remained in him must still have some memory of what had happened to him in the past...and the panic would sometimes overtake him.

Her eyes blurred with faint tears, but she blinked them away.  She wasn’t the one hurting right now. She caressed his face gently as his breathed slowed back to a gentle cadence.

“It’s all right, my love, it’s all right,” she whispered.  “No one will hurt you ever again.”

One last tear leaked from his eyes.

_ Goddess, give us the strength to fight the demon. _

Ray  _ choked _ .  Her fingers nearly tightened in Zarc’s hair, but she released him quickly.

The demon?

What demon?

Zarc was...

Ray’s mouth went dry as she thought about it, too hard.

_ When my power shattered, it fled, _ she thought.   _ It became what the humans call Blessings.  Thousands on thousands of pieces, given to thousands of thousands of human souls. _

_ Zarc’s soul only formed four pieces. _

_ Where did they go? _

Ray swallowed around the lump in her throat.  She stroked Zarc’s hair again.

“You should rest, love,” she whispered.

She helped Zarc to his feet.  He was like a doll, like this.  He could respond just enough to match her gentle tugs, to stand up on his own when prompted, to walk when he was pulled along.  He let her lead him back into the house and lay him back down on the bed. He stared, unblinking, up at the ceiling. Left alone, he would doze, and Ray hoped the rest would...do him some good, somehow.  She brushed her hand against his face, and kissed him gently on the forehead.

“I’ll be right back, love,” she whispered.

She pulled her threadbare cloak from its hook, threw it around her shoulders, and then turned on her heel and she was somewhere else.

The forest here was almost as gentle as her own sanctuary, with thin, spindly birch trees and a thin canopy that let plenty of light filter down in golden dapples.  It sent patterns over her tanned skin as she dragged the cloak further over her eyes to hide her face. The humans didn’t recognize her any longer, but it paid to be cautious.

Somewhere ahead of her, she heard singing.

It was a...decent sound, she supposed.  The chorus was clearly trained for it. But there was something somber about the melody that made Ray feel small and withered.  She couldn’t hear the words from here, save for a few snippets of  _ goddess _ .  A hymn for her, then.  No wonder it made her feel depressed.

She made her way towards the music.  That was where she heard the most prayers and petitions, which meant it must have been where that last prayer had come from.  She’d get to the bottom of this.

The campus was...pretty, she supposed.  The town before it wasn’t rich looking, but the cottages were kept up, the roofs thatched, the clay patched as needed.  There were children laughing in the road between the houses, chasing after each other with sticks and pretending to fight each other with them.  She could smell a bakery somewhere among the cluster of houses, and hear the sound of someone flapping out wet linens to hang to dry.

One house had an open front, with steam and smoke twisting out from inside.  A big black dog laid on the steps outside it, but its ears pricked and it looked up when she approached.  As she got nearer, a clanging began to sound from inside, and for just a second, Ray froze, her heart at the base of her tongue.  She remembered the hot, sweltering heat of the forge, the steam that rose when she plunged the hot metal into water, the feeling of her muscles straining with each strike of the hammer against the long blade— 

She closed her eyes, and reminded herself where she was.  She was not forging a weapon to kill Zarc. She was here, and she was now.

She opened her eyes again, and the woman at the forge wasn’t even making a sword.  She wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked like it might be pieces for a cart.

The dog was staring pointedly at her now, and she walked on before the blacksmith noticed her.  She could feel the dog still watching her as she went. Even with her face covered and her power gone, the animals knew her.  She wondered why humans did not.

She made her way through the town towards the building that seemed to be the centerpiece.  It was large, at least for this town. She herself had seen bigger, of course, but it was impressive.  Built out of a pale white wood like the birch trees around it, it had twisted, somewhat asymmetrical pillars and buttresses that made it look as though it had been grown from trees twisted together into the shape of a building.  Large windows were inset along the front and sides that she could see, glimmering with beautiful gemstone colors in stained glass designs that she couldn’t make out from the angle.

Despite herself, her hands itched to get closer, and examine the way it had been built.  How had the humans figured out such an innovative style? A brief spurt of excitement overtook her.

“You, there.  What are you doing here?”

Ray froze.  Were they talking to her?  It took her a moment to remember how words worked.  This was a newer version of one of the languages she had once known, and it took her a minute to decipher its full meaning.

Then she turned slowly, keeping her face shadowed and trying not to look too nervous.  It was a tall, imposing sort of woman, with a seemingly permanently pinched face and beady eyes.  Her graying, patchy hair had been pulled into a bun, and she wore a long white robe that brushed the ground, wrapped with a heavy white scarf that was pinned to one shoulder and draped low off the other.

Ray thought very quickly.  She didn’t know what this place was, but the look the woman was giving her let Ray know that this place was the kind of town where everyone knew everyone.  She looked religious, and then of course there was the hymn that Ray heard, so this was a place of worship. And there was the prayer that had brought her here, that indicated that this place was afraid of or at odds with another, and they would be wary of outsiders.

“I came to pay my respects to the goddess,” she decided to go with.  She emulated an accent from a country she hoped still existed, and spoke slowly, as though this language wasn’t her first.  She had found humans tended to expect less from those who didn’t speak the same language as them. 

The woman’s eyes immediately lost some of their suspicion, but not all of it.

“A pilgrim?” she said.

“Yes,” said Ray.  There we go. That was what she was.

The woman nodded slowly.

“Where is your entry bracer?”

Ray didn’t know what that was, but she saw the woman’s eyes imperceptibly flicker down towards Ray’s wrist, and had an idea that it was some kind of bracelet that pilgrims wore.  She raised one wrist, which was, of course, bare, but the human wouldn’t know that. Ray didn’t have much power, but she could still sometimes  _ suggest  _ to humans what they should be seeing.

This woman, skeptical though she was, seemed open to Ray’s suggestion, and she nodded perfunctorily, seeing a bracelet that wasn’t there.

“The service is nearly over, but you are welcome to join us at the convent hall,” she said, sweeping her hand towards the sound of the hymn, which was finally fading into silence.  Ray nodded and pressed her hands together in a brief sign of gratitude. Though she wasn’t really sure if that sign was still in use among humans, or in this culture, even. How long had it been since she had walked among humans?  Centuries, at least. Well, perhaps her cover as an “foreigner” would cover her tracks a bit on that part.

She followed the woman around the large white building to the back.  A smaller building grew out of the side here, and it looked less white and grown, so it must have been added later.   The woman opened the door for Ray and let her in, Ray bowing her head in thanks.

Inside, the church was surprisingly small and plain.  Ray had seen temples built for her in the past, and so many of them had been ostentatious, shining white marble and detailed carved reliefs of what they considered her symbols, sometimes even gemstones and gold leaf inlaid into the walls.  But here, aside from the stained glass, there was little to no decoration at all. There weren’t even any chairs; everyone stood, facing the small shrine at the back of the room. While she hated any and all temples to her, this one wasn’t too bad.

Ray nearly choked when she walked in, though.  It didn’t matter the distance, she could always hear prayers that called to her no matter where they came from, and coming closer didn’t generally make it worse.  But this room was so  _ dense _ with belief that she was going to choke on it.

She managed to step to the side so that the other woman wouldn’t run into her or look at her strangely, and she tucked herself against the back wall to watch the rest of the proceedings.

A woman rose and stood before the shrine, turning to face the others.  She was clearly much younger than the woman that had brought Ray here, with a kind, round face and deeply tanned skin, her eyes a brilliant magenta.  Light violet hair was cut short around her chin where it curved around her face slightly, and she smiled as she raised her hands upward.

“Let us give thanks and blessings to the goddess who gave us the sun, the rain, and all those that take breath,” she said.  “Let us put our faith and trust in she who birthed us.”

“As the goddess wills it,” the entire room murmured in response.

Ray didn’t join in, her head still buzzing with belief.  She almost felt as though she could use all of her powers once again, everyone believed in her so much here.  It was heady, like a drug, making her tremble slightly and pant from the pulsing of human’s belief in her blood.  She didn’t know how much of this she could take.

The woman at the front of the clergy put her cupped hands together, and even from the back, Ray could see suddenly that she had some kind of small dots in her hands.  Ray inhaled as she watched the items break open, and then sprout. Seeds, Ray realized. And they were growing into flowers in the woman’s hands.

The roots curled around the woman’s hands and underneath, while the stems spread upwards and blossomed into bright red carnations.  

“May the goddess accept this offering, and come among us once again, to protect us from the spread of the demon’s rule,” the woman said. 

She turned back towards the shrine, and knelt, placing the flowers on the floor before the small house-shaped shrine.  She put her hands together and bowed her head, and the rest of the clergy also bowed their heads. Ray copied, feeling the gray haired woman watching her from the corner of her eye.

The fresh air, free of smothering belief, was like coming out of a drugged haze when Ray was finally able to slip back out into the natural world.  How  _ did _ humans decide that these kind of gatherings were what she wanted?  Hell, how did they decide that she wanted to be worshiped at all? She had never told them to do it.  She’d never asked for temples or prayers or offerings. She’d only wanted to build things with them in the beginning.

The clergy all filtered out of the building behind her, and she took her chance to carefully edge to the side of the building and  _ suggest _ to anyone who looked her way that she wasn’t actually there at all.  There, she breathed out, relaxing.

Why had she come?  It was only more of the same.  The demon they spoke of was probably nothing more than another set of human beliefs, ones that they put themselves at odds with.  Humans would convince themselves of anything if they wanted. Belief was powerful: if they believed their enemies were demon-led, they would view themselves as heroes and become more powerful for it.  She didn’t have a place here, among this. It was time to go back home.

“Ma’am?  Are you all right?”

Ray jumped a bit in spite of herself.  Someone was speaking to her again. How had they seen her?

It was the woman who had led the service, the one with the flowers.  She tilted her head, examining Ray for a moment. Ray let her heart rate slow before she answered.

“Just a bit light headed,” Ray lied, using her fake accent again.  “Needed to catch my breath.”

“Oh, are you all right?” the woman said, stepping nearer.  “Do you need anything?”

Ray’s heart ached when the woman got closer.  She was Blessed. Of course she was, how else had she opened the flowers?  But coming so close to a piece of her broken power made her soul ache with longing for the pieces she had lost, reminding her of the holes and ragged edges left behind when her power had fled her.  She actually  _ was _ getting light-headed now.

“I’m fine,” she said, waving a hand.  “It was—a good service.”

The woman hesitated, looking unconvinced, but then she smiled.

“Thank you,” she said.  “It was my first time leading.  Mother Lillian wasn’t sure I was ready.”

“Well...you did a good job,” Ray said lamely.  “Uh...I’ll bet the goddess was pleased.”

The woman visibly brightened. Ray couldn’t help but smile slightly.  She seemed an earnest sort.

“You’re a pilgrim, aren’t you?” the woman said.  “Where are you from?”

Oh.  Crap.  Ray hadn’t thought about that.  What cities still existed nowadays, anyway?

“Sentura,” she guessed, the capital of Shizenrei. She couldn’t imagine that such a large city could have disappeared so quickly.

She had guessed right, because the woman’s eyes brightened even more.

“All the way from Shizenrei?” she said.  “From the seat of the goddess herself? You have come a very long way.  You must be very devoted.”

“Yes,” Ray said.  “Very.”

“What is your name?  What brings you all the way out here?”

She was excitable, and clearly interested in the world outside.  Ray couldn’t help but admire that.

“I’m Ray,” she said, deciding the truth was enough.

The woman made a brief sign with her hands, one that Ray didn’t recognize.

“No wonder you are so devoted,” she said.  “Your parents gave you a very holy name.”

Parents.  Right. Ray was supposed to be someone who had those.

“I guess so,” she said, lamely.  She hadn’t spoken to humans, or really anyone, except Zarc in years, and he couldn’t speak back.  “What’s your name?” Turn the conversation around. Make her talk about herself instead.

“I’m Aria,” the woman said.

“How long have you been here, Aria?” Ray asked.

“All my life,” said Aria, smiling.  “But I’ve only just finally finished my training and been initiated as a full sister.”

“Oh, congratulations,” Ray said.  That was what you said to things like that, right?

Aria smiled broadly, so that had been the right thing to stay.

“How long will you be in Rayglen?” Aria said.

Ray looked up at the sky, checking the angle of the sun.  She needed to get home to Zarc, soon. He’d need dinner.

“I can’t stay long, unfortunately.  I came long enough to pay respects.”

Aria nodded, though she looked disappointed as she pressed her hand over her heart.

“Before you go,” she said.  “You should at least visit the shrine where the goddess sword is kept.”

Ray’s heart plummeted down to her shoes.  For a moment, she swayed. She thought she might pass out.  Aria leaped forward to try and steady her, but Ray came back to herself and shook the hands away.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ray said.  “Head rush.”

“Are you sure?” Aria said, looking concerned.  “Perhaps you shouldn’t leave so soon. We have medical professionals here...”

“No,” Ray said.  Human medicine was always such a tenuous craft.  She wasn’t sure how much she trusted it, especially nowadays.  Besides, her eternal body didn’t need it. “I’m fine.”

She bit her lip, feeling a tremor pass through her again.

“...where is this shrine, though?”


	2. TWO

Ray followed Aria’s instructions to reach the shrine of the sword.  It was tucked in the woods, away from the main campus, and the closer that Ray got, the more her heart hammered in her chest and the more she felt the ground aching beneath her and the more she realized how close she was.  Not to the sword, the sword was a hunk of useless metal without the gemstones that contained her heart and soul. 

She was close to the place where she had killed Zarc.

It was no longer the barren gray wasteland of centuries prior.  This forest had grown where Zarc had died, grown atop of a mass grave of the thousands of humans he had slaughtered in his final battle.  The closer she got to the shrine, though, the more she could feel the pain still laced into the earth from her screams and her pleas and hers and Zarc’s aching hearts.  This was it. They had built her shrine right atop the place where, for all intents and purposes, both she and Zarc had died. The irony was not lost on her.

She stepped clear of the trees and into the circular clearing.  There was a fountain, here, flat, a circle etched with thin, decorative lines and designs through which the water flowed, sunlight glimmering over the top of it.

A tiny, unassuming little shrine sat at the far end, white like the church and the building beside it, though this one was round, with a sloped roof, and a closed door that was grilled off.  Ray walked over the fountain and up the steps to the shrine, peering through the grille. No good. She couldn’t see inside; there was some kind of thin black draping on the other side of the grille that even the sunlight couldn’t pierce.

Powerless she might be, but the trees that had built this shrine remembered who she had been, and when she asked if they might allow her entry, the door opened under her hands politely.

She stepped inside. 

The shrine was big enough for her to stand upright, but no more.  Inside, there was enough space for maybe two or three people to squeeze in, behind the statue.

“Is that supposed to be me?” she muttered, laughing softly.

It didn’t look a thing like her: the statue looked like some older, matronly woman in a veil and dress, with a plain, placid face.  She was holding the sword blade down between her praying hands.

Yeah.  That was it.  That was the sword she had used.  Ray traced the hollows in the base of the blade, where her gems had once sat.  She had taken them home with her, so that the sword would be powerless again, and they sat on her windowsill.  Her power, condensed into gems, that yet she couldn’t reach or touch again.

“What are you doing??”

The voice cracked over Ray’s head, and she whipped around, cloak flying around her.  The gray haired woman had arrived again, eyes wide and face pale. Behind her were three others in the same white robes.

“Get away from the shrine,” the woman snapped.  “It is unholy to step in that sanctuary!”

Ray  _ almost _ laughed.  It was her own damn sword, and what was holy about that?  Goddess she might be, but holy? Nothing about her was holy.

She didn’t need to stay here.  She had seen everything she wanted.  All she had to do was twist and disappear back home.

But hell, she really didn’t want to give the humans any more reason to call for her by making them realize who she was.  If the humans knew their goddess had been among them...she’d never hear the end of it clattering around her head and making her want to scream.  They might even try to track her down, stumble over her sanctuary somehow, and then find Zarc. And then, who knew what would happen. She couldn’t allow that, ever.

So she stepped out of the shrine, hands up in placation.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “The door was open, and I thought it was normal.  I haven’t been here before.”

“Don’t lie,” the woman said.  “I was watching you. You opened that door.  Who are you? Some spy from Zarkania?”

It wasn’t a country that Ray remembered, but she shook her head.

“I’m not a spy for anyone.”

She just...needed to be able to get into the trees.  She could hide, suggest to them that she wasn’t really there, and then after they passed her, she’d go home.  They’d think she had just fled into the woods and they’d lost her, and never guess who she was. She’d just move free of the shrine, keep them talking until she could bolt...

They took more initiative that she had expected.

Her brain briefly whited out with the shock and pain when the crossbow bolt hit her in the shoulder.  Her entire body spun around and then hit against the steps, face first. She hadn’t felt pain like this in centuries, and it shocked her into briefly passing out.  She woke up immediately again, however, hearing footsteps scuffling near her. She had to go.

She rolled upwards and ripped the crossbow free of her shoulder.  They cried out with surprise when she rocketed to her feet.

“Stop her!” the woman shouted.  “Stop her!”

Ray’s cloak flew from her neck in her motion.  She used the crossbow bolt to slash at someone who got too close.  Her wound was already sealing. Damn. If they didn’t put two and two together now...

Maybe in the commotion they wouldn’t see it.  She whipped around and made a break for the trees.

Another crossbow hit her in the back this time and she went down.  She again briefly blacked out, but came to herself quicker this time.  She pushed herself to her hands and knees.

Then something cold and metal hit her arms and  _ burned _ white hot against her flesh and she screamed.

The world went black, and Ray thought no more.


	3. THREE

When Ray came to, the first thing she noticed was that her wrist was chained.  She mostly noticed that because her skin was _burning_ where the metal touched her.  It wasn’t too painful, but it was enough to distract her attention for a good while from the rest of her surroundings.

She flexed her fingers, and tried to wriggle her body.  She found that she was sitting on a bed, then. It was a thin, fairly simple thing, but not uncomfortable.  Her wrist was chained to the bedpost behind her, but other than that, she was unbound. Her other arm was free, and she sat up, jingling the short chain around her wrist.

She pulled on the chain briefly.  Then she closed her eyes, and tried to step back to her sanctuary.

Her eyes opened, but her location hadn’t changed.  Uneasiness tugged at her stomach. Despite no longer having the knowledge she once had, even the echo of her former divine intelligence combined with her millions of years of existence was enough for her to make easy conclusions.  Whatever this chain was, it was holding her in place, and preventing her access to what divine powers she had left. Zarc had once been bound with similar chains. Somehow, the humans had not forgotten how to make these, or someone had rediscovered it.

Either it was a coincidence, that these were the only chains they had, or these people knew who she was.  And that was troubling.

She took a look around the room, to familiarize herself, gather information.  The room was small, white, and sterile. It smelled like disinfectant. An medical room of some kind, then.  The room was mostly bare, save for a small table with a glass of water beside her, a counter on the other side of the room with cabinets above it, and some kind of paper hung on the wall.

The door opened, then, as Ray examined her prison.

The woman with the graying hair emerged, with a small, mousy looking girl with spectacles and short, irregularly trimmed dull green hair, who skittered nervously behind her, clutching a board with paper clipped to it.  Ray’s eyes flickered to the girl for a moment, feeling an ache in her chest. She, too, was Blessed, it seemed. She wondered which of her powers she had.

The woman looked down her nose at Ray, and for a moment, no one spoke.  Ray would not be the first to speak. That was key to gathering information.  Let them come to you.

“You are not a pilgrim,” the woman said.

Ray actually snorted.

“Well.  That’s one way to begin.  With the obvious,” she said.

The woman’s lips pursed tightly.  Ray supposed she was supposed to be worried, and part of her was.  She was stuck, unable to return home, and Zarc was alone.

But she was also old as balls, and this woman wasn’t as intimidating as she thought she was.

“What is your name?” the woman said.

“Ray,” said Ray.

“Your _real_ name.”

“That’s the one I was born with.”

The woman huffed, and the girl beside her began to scribble.  Ray felt something in her calm down then.  Unless this woman was a fantastic liar, it seemed she didn't know who Ray really was.  The chain was a coincidence.

“Do you know where you are?” the woman asked.

“No, but I assume you’ll inform me when you think I need to know.”

“Where are you from? Who are you working for?”

“Nowhere and no one.”

The woman’s lips actually curled with disgust.  Ray shrugged at her. She wasn’t telling any lies.

The woman flicked her eyes to the girl beside her, who jumped a bit when she clicked her tongue.  The girl hadn’t taken her eyes off of Ray for a single moment, staring at her with wide eyes and a white face that overemphasized her freckles.

“Elegy,” the woman said, and the girl jumped again.  She fixed her glasses with one hand, looking nervous.

“She’s...she’s not lying,” she mumbled.  “She’s telling the truth.”

Ray’s stomach twisted with some uncertainty.  How could she tell so easily? Saying it out loud seemed to make her look as uncomfortable as she felt, as though she, too, were upset by having to say it.

The woman’s hand twitched, and the girl flinched again, half raising her board as though as a shield between them.

“I’m sorry, Mother Lillian, but it’s the truth, she at least thinks telling the truth.  I sense no lies in her.”

 _Truthteller_ , Ray thought.   _So that’s what she has.  The ability to tell if someone is lying._

It was one of the handful of her lost abilities that she didn’t miss.  She didn’t really need to talk to anyone, or tell if they were lying, and even if she did, thousands of years of speaking with and knowing humans gave her enough common sense to simply figure it out if someone was lying.  She didn’t need the extra help.

The woman, Mother Lillian, apparently, turned back towards Ray with a cold, suspicious look in her eye.  Ray just watched her back, trying not to look as uncomfortable as she was starting to feel. She wanted to go home.  Zarc was waiting for her. She had never been away this long before...would he even notice? Would he start to panic; would his episodes get worse?  The way her body was now, she could live without eating or sleeping, but it was uncomfortable, and she suspected it would be the same for him. If she wasn’t there to feed him, he could get sick.

“I find it hard to believe that you could be telling any sort of truth,” Lillian said.  “But I am willing to make an offer to you.”

Ray pressed her lips together, refusing to respond.

“You have an interesting Blessing, it seems.  You’ve healed nearly instantaneously from the blows you took last night.”

She paced across the room so that she was standing in front of Ray.

“Zarkania pushes its advantage far beyond its central city in these days.  We need strong Blessed to fight them and maintain the power of the goddess.  Pledge yourself to the goddess’s cause, and I will release you among ours.”

Ray could probably just lie and say sure, of course; anything to get the chain off of her and then let her slip back home.  But then there was the truthteller, and she doubted that she would lie to her leader. She was too scared and nervous, and looked as though she was ready for her to strike her.  She wouldn’t risk it. Lying was out of the question.

So Ray simply leveled her gaze directly into the woman’s eye.  Lillian actually hesitated, uncertainty fluttering over her features.

“If you think for a moment that I will pick up a sword ever again,” she said.  “You are sorely mistaken.”

Lillian hesitated again, and for a moment, Ray wondered if the woman had managed to recognize her.  Then she scowled, shaking her head. She removed something from her robes, and before Ray could do little more than catch the glimpse of the needle, Lillian had pricked the it into Ray’s arm.

Immediately, Ray began to feel sleepy, and her head sagged back towards the pillows, arm still hanging chained over her head.

 _Fuck_ , she groaned, before she fell into the darkness.


	4. FOUR

Ray had never been drugged before, so she wasn’t entirely positive how it would react on her.  Wouldn’t her body flush it out right away? One way or another, she passed out, but she was  _ pretty _ sure the dose was supposed to last longer than it did: because when she woke up, there were five people with masks over their noses and mouths hovering over her and tubes sticking out of her arms steadily pumping out blood and there was a thin medical knife hovering over her skin.

The chain however, seemed to have been removed.

Ray crashed her fist into the closest masked figure, and that was enough to make the others leap back with surprise, and then Ray was struggling upwards.  Her vision swam; her body was reproducing the blood she was losing, but it had never had to replace this much before. She knew it was stupid, but she yanked both tubes out of her arms and blood immediately gushed out.  The holes sealed up quickly, but she had already splattered crimsons over the sheets as she staggered and collapsed to the ground.

No time to sit here and worry about them realizing who she was.  She just needed to flee.

She flung her mind back to her sanctuary, closing her eyes so that when she opened them again she would be home— 

Her ankle burned and she cried out, eyes flying open—she was still  _ here! _

Someone had flung another chain at her and it had fallen against her ankle on the ground.  It wasn’t even attached to her, and it was holding her here! She scrabbled back for it, but when her hands fell on top of it, they burned and she hissed, flinching back.  Marks in the shape of the chain briefly shone against her palms before fading.

It was enough of a chance for someone to grab her, hold her hands behind her back as they looped the chains around her again.

“Fuck you, dammit, fuck you,” Ray spat.  She was so  _ dizzy  _ that she could hardly recognize what she was thinking or saying, struggling and bucking and screaming.  “I should have let him kill you all, dammit, I should have let him destroy you, everything I fucking did for you and this is what you give back, let me go, dammit, fuck!”

Another prick in her arm, and she was gone again, her screams dying in her throat.

*    * *

This time when she woke up, she was no longer on a medical bed.  Her hands were not chained, but her ankle was bolted to the floor by the same burning manacle.  This room was more plain, with just a bed and her chain. No windows, no sterile white walls, just wood and single door.

Her head briefly ached with pain, but it seemed her body was growing more used to it, as it faded quickly, and she was alert again save for the pain from the burning chains.  All right. Now what? Where was she?

_ “She’s a madwoman, is what she is.” _

Voices, outside her door.

_ “No wonder Elegy can sense no lies, if she believes what she’s saying is true.” _

_ “But would a madwoman wouldn’t be so self assured?” _

Ray felt frustrated tears rising up in her throat, choking her.   _ Fuck _ .  How long had she been gone, now?  Was Zarc all right? She just wanted to go  _ home _ .  And now she was a madwoman??

Vaguely, she remembered what she had screamed at her captors, and tears bubbled up in her eyes.  She dragged her legs up onto the bed with her and hugged them against her chest, burying her face into them.

_ I didn’t mean it _ , she thought.   _ I didn’t really mean it.  I...I don’t wish that I had let him kill you all.  But fuck. I hate you. _

She was having so much trouble, then, remembering why she had wanted to save them.  Trying to remember why she had killed the one she loved more than anything for them.  She couldn’t remember.

But she couldn’t turn her back on them now, because then...it would be like admitting that what she had done was the wrong thing.  That she had been living with a shell, as a shell herself, for nothing.

She couldn’t admit that.

Thousands of millions of years of life, and she couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone.

*    * *

Ray dozed on and off, alone in her prison cell, for who knew how long.  She startled, however, when she heard the door open, and sat straight up.  More interrogation? More drugs and theft of blood?

But, surprisingly, it was the small, mousy girl who poked her head in, looking nervous.  She squeaked a bit when she saw Ray looking right at him, and Ray thought she might flee.  But she gave one nervous glance over her shoulders, and then slipped into the room, closing it behind her. 

She stood there, pressed against the door for a moment, not looking at her.  What was her name again? Ellen? No, Elegy, she remembered. Like a song.

Elegy’s tongue flicked over her lips, her eyes looking everywhere but at Ray.

“Did you need something?” Ray asked flatly.

Elegy flinched, eyes widening.  She looked over her shoulder through the bars again.  Then she raised a finger to her lips.

“I-I’m here to get you out,” she said.  “B-be quiet.”

Ray’s lips parted.  Elegy scurried forward before she could say anything further, dropping down to where the chain was attached.  She pulled what appeared to be a set of wire cutters out of her sleeve, and started to pry at the chain’s bottom.

“Couldn’t have brought a key?” Ray said dryly.

“I’m sorry,” Elegy said, almost like a compulsion.  “Those chains are made by one of our Blessed, who can lock and unlock anything with a word...without him, I can’t unlock it.  There is no key.”

Now  _ that _ was a random splinter of her powers that she didn’t remember was a separate thing.  It checked out, at least, it was probably something she was able to do at one point. She pressed her tongue between her lips as she watched Elegy struggle to get the cutters through the metal.

“Why are you helping me?” Ray asked.

_ Is it because you know? _ she thought warily.   _ Is it because you know who I am, and you feel obligated? _

Elegy swallowed.

“You stood up to her,” she mumbled.  “It was very brave.”

“What, to that old fart?  Hardly a courageous feat.”

Elegy shuddered, and Ray bit her tongue.  Clearly, something else was going on here with Elegy and Mother Lillian.

“I...I don’t want you to get stuck here like me,” Elegy said, voice shaking.  “I-if you do, they’ll do awful things to you. I want you to run away before you become like the rest of us.”

There was real terror in her voice when she spoke of ‘awful things’ and Ray’s skin crawled.  What were they doing here in this place?

She slid off the bed and crouched beside Elegy.  Elegy flinched when she got close, and Ray immediately felt bad.

“What do you mean, the rest of us?” she said.

Elegy shook her head, lips pressed together and eyes wide with fear.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.  “You’re an outsider. You shouldn’t have to be involved.”

She let out a little grunt, and the cutters got through half of one link.  She fit the cutters on the other side of the link. Ray felt that nervous sense pass over her again.  What was happening down here in this secret prison? Did all of the nuns and monks here know about it, or was it something Lillian was doing on her own?  And why was Elegy so scared?

On instinct, Ray reached for Elegy, but slowly, so as not to startle her.  Elegy still flinched when Ray put her hand on her shoulder. But almost immediately, Ray felt a horrible, metallic taste at the back of her throat, a rising tide of panic and fear that was all too familiar to her, from a day she wanted to forget.

“Oh fuck,” she whispered, hand sliding off of Elegy with horror overtaking her.  “They’re trying to put what’s left of my soul into you.”


	5. FIVE

Elegy looked at Ray with some confusion, hesitating in her task of sawing off the other half of the link.

“ _ Your _ soul?” she said, frowning.

“Never mind,” Ray said.  She’d slipped up. If she was right, then what they were doing here...they were trying to rebuild her.  Or no, not her: but a facsimile of what she had been. A vessel of unimaginable creative energies — to be used as a weapon.

She could sense the scars on Elegy’s soul, where her own soul had been forced to accommodate all of the burning pain and sorrow of Ray’s own lost echo.  And if they were trying to rebuild the goddess in a human body, then what would they try if they figured out they had the goddess herself in their prison?

Elegy bit her lip, considering her for a moment.  Ray’s heart quickened. Elegy could tell truth from lie so...would she call her on her bluff?

She did not.  Elegy turned her eyes back to the chain, and snapped off the connection to the floor.  Ray was still in the manacle, and there was still a long length of chain attached to it, but she could at least move now.

“I-I’ll cut off the long bit so you don’t trip,” Elegy said.

“No time,” said Ray, standing up.  “Time for us to go.”

Elegy’s eyes widened.

“U-us??” she squeaked.

Ray took her hand and hauled her to her feet.  Elegy crunched up on herself immediately, clasping her arms against her chest and hunching over.

“Yes, us,” Ray said.  “After what you told me, do you think I’m going to leave you here?”

“I can’t,” Elegy blurted.  “I can’t! Lillian would never let me go!”

“She doesn’t have to know.”

“Y-you don’t understand all that’s been happening here,” Elegy said.  “She won’t let go of me. She’ll track me down.”

Ray’s lips tightened.  She thought of Zarc, so far away and needing her, and the chain that prevented her from going home.  She looked at Elegy, the small frail girl who trembled at the very thought of freedom.

_ I’ve done so much for them already _ , she thought.   _ Humans can take care of themselves, can’t they? _

A larger part of her, however, looked at Elegy, and saw not all of humanity — but just the one girl, the individual who needed help.

She couldn’t leave her behind.

Ray’s fists tightened.  She marched towards the door and pulled it open, looking back and forth down the hall.  There was no one in this dark, stone hallway, but it was light towards the right, and completely in pitch blackness to the right.  She looked back towards Elegy.

“Are they keeping others here?” she asked.

Elegy wrung her hands.

“A...a few,” she mumbled.  “But they’re all from within the order.  You’re the only outsider.”

“Which way are their cells?  In the dark?”

“Well, we need to go the other way to leave —”

That was all Ray needed to know.  She grabbed the trailing chain and carried it as she marched down the darker half of the hallway.  Elegy squeaked, and hurried to follow.

“There’s only one exit out of here!  We have to go the other way!” she said, tugging on Ray’s arm weakly.  

Ray wouldn’t be dissuaded, though.  There were  _ people _ here.  People who were being hurt because of her, and she wasn’t going to leave them behind.

She heard voices, and slowed, skin prickling.  Elegy’s hand on her elbow squeezed suddenly so tightly that she almost broke the skin with her nails.  Ray approached with caution now, keeping her ears open.

There was a door open to her left.  The voices were coming from there. She edged closer, rationing her breaths.

“...can’t you see that you have a duty to...good?”

“No!  I don’t....Lillian...too cruel!”

She recognized one of the voices: it was that Lillian woman.  The other...Ray swallowed. That sounded like Aria, the girl from before.

She heard a cracking sound, and almost flinched.  She pressed forward, Elegy clinging to her, until she was pressed to the wall right beside the open door.

“Please, let her out of there,” Aria was begging, sounding on the verge of tears.  “This is wrong, Mother! There must be a better way!”

“I brought you here because I thought you would understand the mission we have been given,” said Lillian in a harsh voice.  “It seems I was mistaken.”

Aria let out a faint cry, and there was the sound of a scuffle, then, feet against the floor shuffling around, bodies thumping into each other.

“Mother!”

“If you won’t assist us, you can contribute to the cause in other ways, Aria.”

“You have to let Sonata out!  She’ll die! Mother!!”

A muffled scream, as though coming through glass, cut through Ray’s chest.  She felt a chill past over her. She’d heard enough.

Ray yanked her arm free from Elegy, pushed her back, and then slammed the door the rest of the way open.

The sound cracked over the room, causing every occupant to flinch and stare.  It was all the distraction Ray needed to plant her fist squarely in Mother Lillian’s stupid face.  It gave her fist a very satisfying ache as the woman immediately dropped like a stone, and Ray shook her hand out, eyes flicking to the next opponent.  Two white robed clerics were holding Aria by the arms, and all three of them stared open mouthed. Perfect. 

Ray punched one of the two in the face, too, cracking her knuckles against his nose.  The other was a little quicker on the draw, grabbing hold of Aria and pulling her in front of him like a shield.

It seemed, however, that Ray didn’t have to do anything.  Aria grabbed behind her and twisted, and the man immediately let out a squeal and let go of her.  Aria spun around and clocked him in the side of the head with the blade of her hand, and he dropped to his knees, still clutching between his legs and whimpering.

Aria stumbled backwards, then, and Ray grabbed hold of her shoulders to steady her.  Aria, however, quickly shook off Ray’s help, pointing to the back of the room.

“We have to get her out!” she cried.

Ray’s eyes darted to where Aria was pointing.  There was another girl, on the other side of a glass window.  She was strapped into a strange chair, her long aqua hair mussed and tangled up behind her.  That was where the muffled screaming was coming from.

Ray spun around, searching for a way in.

“O-over here,” she heard Elegy squeak, and looked up to see the little girl had sneaked in and was already unlocking a door on the side of the room.  

Ray hurried over with her chain clinking against the ground, but Elegy grabbed her arm before she could go in.

“B-be careful!” she said.  “They use that room to amplify Blessings and draw in the goddess.  I-It will be really...powerful in there.”

“That’s not a problem,” said Ray.

She shoved through the door shoulder first, and took the corner around into the room where the girl was being held.

Immediately, she was choking.  Oh  _ fuck _ .  

This room thrummed with power, coursing with it — she could sense electricity in the air, getting static shocks just by moving her hands through the air.  She felt horribly small, like some gigantic eyes were looking down on her — was this what humans had felt when they were in her presence, back when this power had been hers?

It was hers no longer, though, and she could sense that.  Where belief had made her feel as though she were her old divine self again, being in the presence of her actual power made her feel like she was going to throw up.  Her body rejected the memory of the power it once had, power it was no longer equipped to hold.

And oh god, the echoes of herself left behind in that power — tears were rolling down her face as her brain screamed with all the pain, agony, and despair of the day she had lost her power.  The hate and anger and the imprint of what had caused her power to flee her, the day she’d killed for the first time, stained and tainted the power in this room, made it hard to breathe.

She nearly fell to her knees — if this was her reaction to her old power, how on earth could a human hold it?

“I don’t want to fight,” the girl in the chair gasped, and Ray forced her eyes to open against the pain.  “Please...don’t make me fight any more.”

That was not the girl’s voice.

That was Ray’s own voice.

Ray thought she would simply shatter to pieces right there.  Her old power, still stained with the fragments of her despair, threatened to consume her, destroy her, wipe away what remained of her in this world.

But the girl was crying.  She was so alone. She must feel so alone.

Ray grit her teeth.  She forced herself forward.  One step. Another. 

_ Don’t think.  Don’t think about what happened.  Don’t remember. This power — it’s not who I am.  It’s not who I ever was. _

_ It’s only a ghost. _

She reached the girl, and laid her hands on the straps that held her.  Luckily, they were only leather ties, and not metal. Ray’s fingers trembled and she fumbled the knots more than once, but she managed to undo them.  She hauled the girl out of the chair, snapping the metal ring around her head. She heard the girl gasp, and the power in the room immediately sucked away, leaving them in an empty vacuum.

Ray almost collapsed.  She’d been fighting against the pain for what felt like hours, and now that there was nothing to struggle against, she felt as though she’d fall over from a lack of resistance.

But the girl was in her arms, and she couldn’t let her fall.  She hauled her over her shoulders, pulling her back out of this horrible room.  It seemed that the girl had been the only calling back the rest of the power, and without her in the apparatus, there was nothing summoning Ray’s ghost anymore.  Her breaths were returning to normal. She was only asleep.

Still, Ray’s skin thrummed with the memory of it.  It had been like the whole of the universe, pressing in around her.  She’d really held that all within her once? It seemed impossible for so much to have been within a single soul.

She struggled one step at a time, until she was heaving herself and the girl back through the doors.

She heard a gasp, and Aria cried out.  

“N-no!  Don’t hurt her!” Elegy cried.

Then another gasp, and a  _ hrk _ , and Ray felt something cold in her chest. Ray’s eyes darted upwards.

Her heart, which had only just begun to slow, stopped for just a moment.

Aria was on the floor, clearly having been shoved down.  She stared with horror in front of her, and Ray didn’t — didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t look away.

Elegy stood in front of Aria, her arms held out as though she’d been trying to shield her.  But her eyes were wide. Her face was pale.

There was blood pooling around her shirt from the sword plunged into her chest.

Ray’s mind went white. For a moment, all she could see was red.  The red of the blood that had stained her hands from the sword plunged into Zarc’s chest.  The red of Elegy’s blood, as Mother Lillian yanked the sword out of Elegy’s chest and the girl collapsed to her knees, face first into the dirt.

Ray didn’t remember putting the other girl down.  But a scream ripped out of her throat, and she was launching herself across the room before she knew what she was doing.

Lillian’s eyes shot at her, and her lips curled into a snarl, sword flashing for Ray next.  The sword hurt when it bit into Ray’s arms, but she hardly noticed.

“Bitch!” Ray screamed.  “How can you do this? How can you  _ do this _ ?”

She tried to attack Lillian with her bare hands, but the woman heaved her back by pushing the sword against her.  The sword cut deeply into Ray’s arms and thick streams of blood immediately began to run down to her hands, slickening her grip.  She couldn’t think. She didn’t know what she was trying to do. All she could remember was Elegy’s wide eyes.

“How do you all do this?” Ray screamed.  “How can you be so cruel to each other?? Where did you learn it??”

She tried to attack Lillian again, reaching for her throat, but the blade caught against her temple and dug another gash that made her dizzy.  Ray stumbled backwards. She heard footsteps in the hallway, and Aria shouted.

Ray saw a massive explosion of vines and roots rip out of the ground, thickening over the doorway in the corner of her eye.  When her gaze flickered, however, Lillian stabbed at Ray again, this time getting her in the shoulder. Ray yanked herself back.

“Miss!” Aria cried behind her.  “Miss! Elegy is still alive! We need to get her someplace safe!”

_ Still alive _ .

Ray whirled — Aria had a hand to Elegy’s back, and sure enough, Elegy’s back rose and fell desperately.  Clinging to life. Still alive.

Ray screamed when Lillian stabbed her right through the stomach, the blade poking out through her from behind.  She flung herself forward, sliding off the blade, but her blood was already getting everywhere, and  _ dammit _ it hurt!

Aria rushed forward, grabbing Ray in her arms.  The ground rumbled and roiled, and then the stone floor beneath them exploded.  Roots, thick and wild, burst from the ground, briefly surrounding them in a wall.  Ray leaned agaisnt Aria for a moment, catching her breath.

“Miss,” Aria gasped. “I know not where you come from, but please — take Elegy and flee.  I will hold them off.”

“You can’t do that by yourself,” Ray said, pressing a hand to her stomach to try and stay the blood.”

“You’re injured,” Aria said, voice trembling.  “Please don’t worry — I won’t lose. I’ll protect me and Sonata.  I’ll make sure I destroy all of this research, too— so that no one can ever be hurt like this again.”

Her eyes were full of tears when she leaned back, holding Ray by the shoulders.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, smiling even as the tears rolled down her cheeks.  “I thought we were doing something good here. I had no idea followers of the goddess could be so cruel.”

“All humans are cruel,” Ray whispered, her own eyes filling with tears.  “Except for the ones like you.”

Aria only smiled.  She stood, wiping away the tears from her eyes.  The roots that protected them were starting to cave in — someone was on the other side, beating their way through.

“Take Elegy,” Aria said.  “Run. Run somewhere far, somewhere safe.  And may the goddess bless you.”

Ray couldn’t see through the pain and the tears, but she groped for Elegy, gathering the girl up into her arms.  She struggled to her feet. Aria had her eyes on the wall of roots around them, waiting for an opening.

“The goddess can’t help anyone,” Ray blurted out, tears blurring her eyes.  “So don’t wish for the goddess’s blessing. Have faith in yourself — have faith that you can change the things that she couldn’t.”

Aria looked at her with surprise, eyes widening.  The roots broke apart, and the gaze between them broke.

“Go!” Aria shouted, as the roots came to her command, twisting away from the hole that had been made and crashing into those outside, pushing them briefly aside.

Ray had a way out.  She dove for it.

Elegy was so light that she barely felt her weight in her arms.  She almost slipped on her own blood a few times though, her grip slick and her wounds not yet sealing.  She ran down the hallway, the way that Elegy had directed before.

She burst out into a small lobby, searching desperately for a way out.  Stairs! To her left! 

But as she began to bolt for them, she heard footsteps pounding down them.  Two monks in white robes apart. One of them pointed at her, and the other shouted, starting towards her.

There was a door to her right.  She ran for that one in stead, pummeling through it with her shoulder.

The room beyond was large and dark, only a faint glow coming from the rows upon rows of vials.  Ray had no time to examine them. She ran down the rows, towards the other said.

“Nowhere to run, bitch!” one of her pursuers shouted.

She skidded to a stop at the end of the hall.  They were right, she saw in a panic. The wall was blank!  There was no other way out of this room!

Elegy was getting cooler in her arms.  No! No, no, no! It wasn’t fair! She wasn’t even allowed to save one person?  The good ones would always fall to the whims of the greedy and the cruel? What kind of a world had she made?  What kind of a world had she killed him for?

Ray screamed in anger and frustration.

“Why?” she shrieked.  “Why? Why is this the way it has to end?  What was the purpose of everything I did? Why is this the world that remains?   _ Why am I abandoned like this after all I did?” _

Something sighed.  She felt the world twist towards her — the echo of the power that had once been hers, that had still thrummed over her skin after the moment she’d come in contact with it.  No, not her power any longer.

But it answered her.

Ray gasped, blinking at the door that had appeared before her.

She shoved into it with her shoulder, and it opened.  She clutched Elegy to her chest, and turned to kick it shut.  Her heart hammered. Where had the door come from? Where did this passage go?

Had...had the world actually granted her wish?

“Where did she go?” she heard a voice shout on the other side of the door. 

“What the hell?  Where is she?”

Ray stumbled back.  They couldn’t see the door.  The door was...it had been for her.  Only for her.

The world truly had granted her one last wish.

Ray turned, and ran down the earthen corridor, her chain dangling behind her.


	6. SIX

Ray didn’t remember how long she ran, or how far.  Her chain kept getting caught in the trees, and it would take everything she had not to tumble forward on top of Elegy.  She managed to hold the chain up by the tail of it as she fumbled to keep Elegy in her arms, and kept running.

She ran until there was sun passing through the trees, and the birds were starting to sing their morning hymns.  Her lungs began to scream, and even her ever-healing body couldn’t keep up with the pace. It was getting hard to see, and she thought she must not be breathing deeply enough.  She almost struck into a tree, and had to spin around to strike into it back first instead of crushing Elegy against it.

The impact rattled her, and she slid down to the bottom of the trunk, her entire body trembling with exertion.

She wasn’t sure how far she’d ran.  Far enough? Would they come for her and the injured, dying girl in her arms?  Her eyes fluttered closed despite her desperate attempts to hold them open. She...she had to keep going.  Going where? She had no idea. She could not go home, not with the chain still on her ankle.

Her eyes closed.  She felt Elegy slip out of her arms.

She slept.

* * *

Waking up was a curious experience. 

Her nose twitched, eyes not yet open.  She smelled...flowers, and leaves. And the faint scent of something warm and delicious.  It made her mouth water in spite of herself. Her fingers curled beneath her into what seemed to be a soft pile of leaves.  Her eyes cracked open, light filtering through her eyelashes.

Where was she?

“Ah, you are awake.  Are you feeling all right?”

The voice was unfamiliar, and despite the calm, kind tone, Ray’s heart leaped into her throat.  She sat bolt upright immediately.

“Hush, hush,” said the voice, cool hands alighting on her shoulders.  “You must rest. Don’t move too quickly.”

Ray was fine, though.  Her head was clear and she felt perfectly in order.  She pushed the hands from her shoulders, eyes falling upon their owner.

The woman was a tall, broad figure, with a sharp face and a sharper nose.  Beautiful grey-black eyes shone at Ray from a bark-brown face, framed with thick black locks of wavy hair that fell well past her waist and cascaded onto the floor.  She was dressed in a cloak made of a thousand feathers stitched together, black and yet luminescent, catching rainbow shimmers in the light when she moved. And something about her felt...nostalgic?  Why was that? Her chest squeezed as though meeting an old friend.

The woman put a sturdy hand to Ray’s forehead, humming softly.

“You seem to be all right,” she said, with just a hint of surprise.  “How do you feel?”

“Where am I?” Ray asked.  “Where’s Elegy?”

“Hush, hush,” the woman said soothingly.

Ray did not hush, though.  Her ankle still burned with the pain of the chain still connected there, and she looked desperately for some sign of the girl.  She sat inside a hut, she realized. The walls were made of bark — no, they  _ were _ bark.  As she stared at the walls, she realized that she was looking at the shell of a tree, grown around the window and door set in it, on a wooden plank floor with a bed of leaves.  It was like being inside a giant hollow tree. Birds chirped and insects buzzed outside the open door.

“The young girl you brought with you is fine,” the woman reassured her.  “She was in quite a bad way.”

“She was stabbed,” Ray said. “Is she...”

“She will live.  She will need much time to recover.  But the forest has accepted her, and it will nurture her recovery.”

Ray’s lips parted, as she finally turned all of her attention to the woman.  She had a very calm and placid sort of face. Ray wasn’t sure what to make of her.  She spoke of the forest like a living thing.

The woman turned, and took up a small cup of water hewn from wood.  She lifted it towards Ray, and slowly, Ray took it from her. The water was shockingly cool and clear, she found, and she gulped it all down.  She hadn’t even known how thirsty she was.

She gasped as she put the empty cup down.  Then she turned her eyes to focus on the woman again.

“Who are you?” she asked.  “And where are we?”

The woman smiled, her eyes sparkling.

“You are in Corkoro, the oldwoods,” the woman said.  “And my name is Luscinia.”

She stood up, her feather cloak falling over so that it completely swathed her whole body almost to her boots.  She walked to the window and leaned out it for a moment, reaching her hand out. A moment later, a bird swooped down and landed in her palm.  It was a small, pretty brown bird with a white breast. The woman locked eyes with the bird for a moment, and Ray was surprised at how focused it was on her.  

Then it hopped to the edge of her fingers, and she tossed it lightly up to help it take off.

“I’ve sent my friend to check on yours,” she said, returning to Ray.  “But I’m sure she will be all right. Our best medics are helping her now.”

Ray’s lips parted, eyes widening.   _ That _ was where that strange nostalgic feeling was coming from.  This woman was Blessed too.

“Can you speak to the birds?” Ray asked.

Luscinia smiled, and nodded.

“They are the ones who brought me to you,” she said.  “A hawk told me that you were unconscious in the woods.”

Luscinia tilted her head then.

“You seem to have good friends among the birds.  They were very insistent that I come for you.”

Ray felt a heat pass her cheeks.  It had been many, many years, centuries, even, since she’d spoken to a bird.  But she still remembered; it had been a hawk who had showed her when Zarc was being tortured.  It seemed the birds still remembered her.

As though to confirm this thought, a tiny sparrow came to sit on the windowsill.  Another hopped beside it, and then a robin, and a cardinal. A blue jay flitted past, squawking angrily at the fact that there was no place for it to sit.  A few hummingbirds hovered in the window, flitting up and down as though to get a glimpse of her.

Luscinia glanced at them, and then back at Ray.  Ray felt herself tensing. Were the birds telling her?  Did Luscinia know who she was?

But Luscinia only shook her head, smiling.

“You must be famous,” she laughed.  “They like you. I’ve never seen them act like this.”

“Well, I guess I’m popular with the bird crowd,” Ray said, smiling awkwardly.

Luscinia chuckled, and stood up again to pick up a wet towel that Ray assumed had been to bring her fever down.

“Well, now that you are awake and you seem strong, you’re welcome to join us for supper.”

Ray’s stomach growled right on cue, and she flushed.  She’d spent the last few decades, or maybe centuries, growing her gardens and eating from them even though she was immortal enough to not need it.  But this was the first time in many years that she’d actually felt hungry. She mumbled a quiet thank you, and rose to join the woman outside.

She couldn’t help but gape when she came out.

“It’s in the trees,” she blurted.  What a stupid thing to say!! But it was all she could think about.

Before, her, a beautiful forest of tall, strong trees spread before her.  There were doors set into their trunks, swinging bridges hung between them, ropes hanging from the trees.  As she watched, she saw a child make a wild leap for one of the ropes. But as her heart leaped to her throat, he caught it and swung across to the next platform.

“You’ve grown them  _ in _ to the trees,” Ray said with awe, pressing a hand against the tree.

“The forest takes care of us,” Luscinia said.

Ray turned to her, lips parting with awe and interest.  In spite of everything, she couldn’t help but flutter with fascination.  She wanted to know everything — what was the process for making these tree houses?  How long had they been here? What did Luscinia mean when she said the forest took care of them?  Was the forest alive in some other way other than the obvious? Was it sentient?

But the questions were all too much and it had been so long since she’d been around humans, and longer since she’d been around humans she trusted, and so she swallowed them away, following Luscinia across a swinging bridge to a particularly large tree.

Inside the trunk of this one, a huge mess hall opened up to her.  She smelled the thick, delicious scent of sizzling meat and roasted vegetables.  There were people everywhere, of every race and ethnicity. She’d never seen such a collection of people before in her life.

“Evening, ward!”

“Is that the girl from earlier?”

“Hoy there, ward!  Got in a bunch of strawberries from harvest today!”

Luscinia smiled and waved to each person who greeted her, stopping to clasp arms and to smile and accept flowers from small giggling children who ran up to her and then ran away.  Ray watched Luscinia with interest.

“Are you...the leader here?” she asked.

Luscinia smiled.

“I am the ward,” she said.  “I’ve been selected to watch over the forest, and those who belong to it.  So...I suppose yes, you could consider me a leader of sorts.”

She placed the gifted flower into a hook on her cloak, and led Ray into the mess hall.  Ray felt the chain still clinking across the floor behind her as they approached the pile of food on the table in the center, and she was suddenly aware that it was still there.  She still couldn’t go home.

Luscinia didn’t let her wallow too long in those thoughts.  She took a bowl and began to pile it high with food, forcing it into Ray’s hands without listening to protests.

Ray yelped a little when someone slapped her on the back, flinching — but it was only a cheery looking man, who grinned at her and reached over to grab a large green fruit from in front of her.

“Welcome to the oldwoods, lass,” he said, wandering off again as he bit into the juicy fruit.

A sweet, matronly looking adult with a wide smile stopped Ray as she followed Luscinia over to the table so that they could grasp Ray’s hand.  For a moment, Ray panicked that they had recognized her, but they only shook her hand and welcomed her quietly to the woods.

As Ray sat down where Luscinia indicated, the already full table lifted their mugs towards her, spouting off greetings and welcomes.  Ray couldn’t help but feel a heat rush through her. Embarrassment? Or maybe...surprise. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met such a kind bunch of humans.

Luscinia smiled as she took a seat across from Ray, steepling her fingers beneath her chin.  Ray felt a little awkward to eat when Luscinia didn’t have anything in front of her, but as she began to pick at the bowl, the woman sitting next to her laughed loudly and slapped her across the back, telling her not to be shy before stuffing a hank of meat into her own mouth.  It was impossible to be embarrassed in front of these people, Ray thought with a smile. She gave in to her stomach and began to eat.

“Is it like this all the time?” she asked in between bites.

Luscinia laughed.

“We’re a bit of a rowdy bunch, aren’t we?” she said with a shake of her head. 

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Ray said.

Luscinia’s eyes crinkled when she smiled, and Ray was suddenly struck that Luscinia was much older than she had first guessed.

“I’m glad you think so,” Luscinia said.

Ray smiled tentatively.  For the first time in a while, she found that it wasn’t hard to do.


	7. SEVEN

 

Ray struck at the manacle with a rock again.  It sent up sparks, but it didn’t even leave a mark.  Fuck.

She groaned, leaning back against the wooden platform.

She’d been in Corkoro for three days now.  She wasn’t even sure how many days she’d been in Rayglen.  Zarc was all alone without her. She tried to push away the panic.  What if he’d had another attack and fallen and hurt himself? What if the small thread of soul that he retained wasn’t enough to keep him immortal, and he was dying from thirst or starvation?  Even if he wasn’t dying, he must be in pain without her to take care of him.

She blinked away tears.

“Ray?”

Luscinia’s voice floated up from a lower platform, and Ray sat up, leaning over the edge.  Luscinia stood on the platform across from her, a level down, and Ray waved. Luscinia waved back.  There were a few hummingbirds gathered around her, and Ray wondered if they’d reacted to her distress again.  She’d accidentally sent some owls into a frenzy the night before when she’d had a nightmare, and Luscinia had come running.

She felt guilt curl in her chest.  She was imposing on these people, and Luscinia was being so kind to her.

Luscinia grabbed hold of a nearby rope and clambered up it with the eerie grace that all of the Corkoro seemed to have.  She got up to the platform above her, and then took the rope bridge across to the one that Ray was on.

“Are you all right?”

Ray grimaced.

“It still won’t come off,” she said, gesturing to the manacle.

She’d managed to saw off the extra tail of the chain with some help from some of the Corkoro, but the manacle itself proved impossible.  There was no visible keyhole to pick, and it didn’t react to chopping, striking, or anything. She’d even tried to grease her foot to slip it back through, but it was no good.  She was seriously considering just chopping off her leg. She wasn’t even sure if it would grow back or not, but she wouldn’t die from it anyway.

Luscinia considered the manacle, humming softly to herself.  A sparrow darted onto her shoulder and twittered at her. She nodded to something that Ray hadn’t understood.

“It is quite the problem,” she said.  “Is it not possible to leave it? There are several among us who still wear chains they’ve broken.”

Ray shook her head.

“I...don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t go home if I don’t take it off.”

Luscinia looked up at her, then, catching her eyes.  She smiled sadly.

“You won’t stay, will you?” she said.

Ray looked down at her knees.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I really appreciate everything you’ve all done here.  But...but there’s someone waiting for me. This...this is a lovely place.  But it can’t ever be home, for me.”

Luscinia nodded, sitting down beside Ray and letting her legs dangle off the side of the porch.

“Home isn’t a place,” she said softly.  “It’s a person.”

Ray shot a look at her.  She looked suddenly so far away, the wind picking at her long hair and sending it in a pretty wave from her back.  Ray felt something stir in her chest, and she felt almost sick with a longing she hadn’t let herself feel in a long time.

“That’s the tenet of Corkoro.  It’s not the place that is our home.  It’s the people we bring together here,” Luscinia said.  She put her hand atop Ray’s, and Ray inhaled, shivering at the touch.  “Let us know what we can do. We’ll help you return to your home.”

Ray fought back tears.

“Why are you doing this for me?” she whispered.  “Is it...do you know what I am?”

Luscinia glanced at her curiously.  She shook her head, then.

“The birds seem very fond of you,” she said.  “And they’ve offered to tell me why.”

She smiled, and squeezed the back of Ray’s hand.

“But I believe some secrets should belong to their owners.  You may share it if you wish, but I will not pry.”

“So...you’d really do this for anyone?  Why?” Ray said.

The breeze whistled between them, and Ray’s heart sang with desperation.  What was this human? Why was she so kind, for no reason? Humans...she had always loved them, but they had always scared her, too.  They could be violent and cruel and so few of them would act out of any form of selflessness. She’d lost so much faith in them since Zarc.

Luscinia only smiled.

“That’s another thing we believe, here in the forest,” she said.  “We do what we can for others because we know we’re all, at heart, connected.”

“Connected?”

Luscinia pointed at the trees above them.

“Once, these trees were only seeds.  Those seeds fed on the earth and the water, and they grew tall and strong.  Someday, they will die. They will return to the earth. And new things will feed on them, and they will become a part of every other living thing in the forest.  The same is true of us. We were all made from the same things. And we will become a part of everything once we pass on.”

Ray’s lips parted, and she could only stare at this woman, not at the trees, and still wonder.

“We are kind to all we can be kind to, because it means we are being kind to ourselves.”

Ray shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know if I can believe that,” she whispered.  “I lost...so much. It’s hard to believe.”

Luscinia took her hand in hers, rubbing the back of her hand with her thumb.

“That’s all right,” she said.  “You don’t have to.”

Ray wanted to ask more.  She wanted to listen more, to this human who was somehow far more wise and kind than she could ever hope to be.  And she was supposed to be the goddess here? It felt like a cosmic joke.

Another bird landed on Luscinia’s shoulder, and she turned to it.  She smiled.

“It seems your friend is finally awake,” she said to Ray.

Ray was immediately on her feet, heart hammering.  Elegy! She was awake!

Speaking of humans who were too good for her...

* * *

Elegy looked thin and pale, but she was sitting up and drinking water on her own.  She sat up a little straighter when Ray burst into the room.

“Elegy,” she gasped.  “You’re — are you all right?”

“Oh, Ray!  You’re not hurt, are you?” Elegy said at the same time, dropping the empty cup and reaching for her.

Ray could only remember the blood for a moment.  The soft intake of breath as Elegy threw herself in between Ray and the sword and the blade pierced her.

Ray collapsed to the side of the bed, grasped Elegy’s hand, and began to cry.

“You could have died,” she said.  “You could have died! Why did you do that?”

Elegy tightened her grip on Ray, and with one shaking hand, patted her head awkwardly.

“I told you to run,” she whispered.  “But you heard someone else was hurting, and you ran towards them, instead.”

Ray looked up through her tears to see Elegy smiling weakly at her.

“It...it made me feel just a little bit brave,” she said.  “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt while there was something I could do to stop it.”

Ray bent her head to the bed and cried.  She cried, and cried. She felt awful for crying — it wasn’t her place to.  She wasn’t the one who had almost died. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the fear that came with being on the verge of death.  Elegy was the one who had been hurt. But she couldn’t shake the terrifying feeling, the deep-seated fear, that someone had been about to die for her.  For  _ her _ !  What had she ever done to deserve someone to sacrifice themselves for her!  She hadn’t stopped Zarc right away. She’d let him kill and destroy for so long before she’d finally stood up to him.  The humans had no basis to worship her as a god, or to defend her as a human. It was in her own name that they were doing such awful things in that laboratory — she could have said something, revealed who she was, admonished them and demanded them to stop!  Even if they hadn’t believed her, she should have done more!

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “Elegy, I’m so sorry.”

Elegy only continued to stroke her hair.

“Don’t apologize,” she whispered.  “I chose to do what I did. All on my own.”

Ray only cried.  It was all she knew how to do.

* * *

“Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”

Ray nodded.  She felt like she almost couldn’t look at anyone.  Elegy looked so sad, balanced on her crutches. Some part of her felt indebted to the girl.  She felt like she should stay longer, just for her, for what she’d done. But Elegy had seemed to sense that already, and had told her before she could say anything that she needed to go back to where she wanted to be.   _ I tried to save you because I wanted you to be able to go home safely.  So please, I want you to go home. _

Ray stood awkwardly at the edge of the small group who had come to see her off.  She was on the ground for the first time in days, and the grass was thick and plush.  The Corkoro had refused to let her go without far too many gifts and provisions. She was outfitted in new, clean clothes, sturdy walking boots, and laden with food and tools and even a map and compass.

She couldn’t get the manacle off, so...her only other way home was to walk.  And Zarc was waiting for her. She must get back to him, no matter what it took.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the group.  To Elegy. To Luscinia. “I can’t ever thank you all enough for what you’ve done for me.”

“It was the least we could do,” Luscinia said.

“No, it was the most.  Please just accept my thanks.  I’m going to feel embarrassed if you don’t.”

Some of the group laughed, and Luscinia smiled.

“Very well.  We accept your thanks.”

Ray shifted her bag onto her back.

“I will...never forget you,” she said.  “Any of you.”

“And us you,” Elegy said.

Ray bowed to them, as low as she could.  She was fighting back tears once again.

_ This world...maybe it was worth saving. _

When she rose, Luscinia stepped forward and took her by the hands.  She clasped them tightly, and looked right into her eyes.

“Blessings go with you,” Luscinia said.  “May the goddess see you on your way.”

“Don’t bless me on her name,” Ray blurted, before she could say anything.  And then she flushed, realizing how blasphemous she must sound to them, and how she must be disappointing them now at the end.  “I mean...I just...I don’t think that...she’s...interested in my journey.”

Luscinia’s lips parted as Ray fumbled.  Her eyes lit with a soft recognition, and with a trembling shudder, she knew — Luscinia had just figured out who she was.

But Luscinia said nothing.  She only smiled, and pressed Ray’s hands between hers.

“May the world bless you, then,” she whispered.  “And may it carry you safely home.”

Ray fought back more tears.  Luscinia finally let go of her, and for a moment, she couldn’t move.  Would that she could stay here forever, she thought. In such a peaceful place, with such peaceful people.

But Zarc needed her.  She saw him in the back of her mind, lost and alone.  And the world outside would never be peaceful forever.  Only their little sanctuary would be a place for them. And he needed her.

She bowed once more, and the others bowed back.  Then she turned before she could regret it, and started off without another word.

There was nothing left to say.  Only the journey ahead of her remained.


	8. EIGHT

Ray had never walked this far by herself.  She couldn’t remember having  _ ever _ walked more than maybe a mile or two, and only when she was enjoying the scenery, back when she had all of her powers and didn’t even notice how far she’d gone.

But now, she was as close to mortal as she’d ever been.  Though her body healed as she went, she felt the strain quickly.  Her legs ached, her feet grew blisters which became calluses over the course of an hour, her back began to scream with agony from the previously easy weight of her pack.  She found herself craving food and water far more often than she normally did, and once her waterskin was empty, she spent many hours heaving dry, cracked breaths through her dry lips, trying to force down dried fruits from her pack as she walked.

Still, she didn’t let herself stop and rest, except to check her map and compass to be sure of which way she was going.  She might be in pain, but Zarc needed her. He might have fallen, hit his head, he would be even more starving and thirsty than she was, and she still couldn’t be positive if he was immortal enough to survive her absence.  That fear drove her on.

The sun rose and set once before she left the forest, and stepped out into a vast field.  It rose and set twice more while she pressed on through the grasslands, until her limbs shook and every step was torture.

By the fourth day, she had to stop.  Even her immortal body couldn’t handle this.  She found a small stream cutting through the field as the sun began to dip below the horizon, and she stopped there.  She dropped her pack and then dropped her body. She still had plenty of food leftover — the Corkoro had been incredibly generous.  She forced herself to swallow a few more mouthfuls of dried fruit and jerky, and then dragged herself to the stream to drink directly from it.  Then she rolled over, dropped her head onto her pack, and passed out.

She awoke with a start to her pack being yanked out from beneath her head, a torch flaring right into her face, and the loud scuffling of feet and swears of a different language that the ones she’d been using recently.

She yelped as a pair of hands hauled her up to a sitting position.  She twisted quickly, breaking out out of the hands, and swung around onto the balls of her feet, bouncing up.  She heard a laugh and someone said something — it took her a moment to wrap her mind around the accent, the dialect, and the faint changes in slang for her to settle in to what the person was saying.

“Looks like you’re a feisty one, ain’t ya?” said a drawling sort of voice.  “You out here by yourself, darling?”

Ray immediately tensed, lifting both of her arms up, fists clenched.  It was hard to see with all the torches blinding out the dark night, but in a moment, she saw the edges of faces and hands holding the torches.  She saw a short, scrawny boy holding her pack, and bristled.

“I’ll have that back now,” she said.

A taller, broader man beside the boy cracked a smile, and the whole company laughed — five of them, she saw now.  She wasn’t sure if she could take five. She might have to make a run for it and forget the pack, as much as it made her feel guilty about losing everything that she’d been given.

“Oh will you now, lass?” the taller man said, still grinning that insufferable grin.

He looked her up and down, and Ray had a sudden crawling sensation down her spine.  She’d seen eyes like that before, but never made at her. She’d seen the way men like this made women tense up and try to go the long way around to avoid.  For the first time, she understood their unease. Had she really once been so powerful as to have never even felt a hint of tensity around men like this?

Her eyes flicked to the rest of his crew, loosely arranged around her.  They were clearly untrained, ramshackle. Bandits with no real training.  She could break out through an opening there, but she would need to time it right.

“You’re a pretty sight, aren’t you?” he said in a low voice, his lips peeling back from his teeth, the whites glinting in the firelight.

He stepped towards her, and she lifted her hands a little higher.

“You gonna fight, lass?” he said.  “You don’t look like you’ve got much to ya.”

“You’d be surprised.”

The crew laughed again, and the man came closer.  She didn’t back up. He would not see her falter. She bored her eyes into his, wondering if he would be able to see, at least a little bit, who she was, the power she’d once held.  The lives that she’d ended.

He didn’t seem to falter, but she did note a small hitch in his step.  That was all she needed.

In one fluid motion, she turned her hands from fists into revealed palms, slamming both hands with the heel of her palms into his chest and catching on his slightly lost balance.  He stumbled, eyes widening and arms wheeling. The others turned towards him instead of her. She turned and she bolted through the opening right behind her, between two of them. She was out of their lit circle a moment — she’d only made one mistake, and that was that in the light of the torches, she’d lost track of where she was, and she couldn’t see well in the dark.  She yelped as her step went out from under her and she stumbled into the stream. It was lost seconds that she couldn’t afford.

Someone much bigger than her grabbed her by the arm as she stumbled, and her body was flung and twisted to the ground on the other side of the river, legs still doused in the water as her head was forced to the ground and her arm was twisted behind her back.  She kicked and bucked, but she was no stronger than any other human her size and weight, and she hadn’t trained her body. The man on top of her used his whole weight to hold her down.

Behind her, despite being pressed into the dirt, she heard the man laughing.

“What a good show, lass!  Oh, but I do like you. You were a good find.”

Ray swore in several languages, the ones that came easiest, as she continued to struggle and twist to no avail.

“I think you’ll make a good penny in Meiying,” he said with another laugh.  “And then —”

Whatever he was about to say, it stopped immediately.  She felt the hands on her back loosen slightly.

“Boss?” the man holding her said.

And then there was the sound of someone striking him in the windpipe, the gasping, choking inhale, and he was flung off of Ray’s back.  She gasped, spitting out dirt as she immediately hauled herself to her hands and knees.

A hand curled under her armpit, and she tried to fight it — but a woman’s voice swore softly.

“Not hurting you, love, not here to hurt you.  Let’s give these bastards the run around, shall we?”

Gentle but firm hands hauled her from the river and put her to her feet.  She couldn’t see well in the dark, nothing but the glint of eyes and the glimmer of a grin as the woman patted her on the shoulder, and then bolted off back towards the torchlight.

Ray spun on her heels.

The men were swinging their torches around, and then Ray heard the clash of steel — as her eyes readjusted, she saw the woman who had saved her bolting into the fray, joining the other bolts of blurred motion.

Ray could only stare with a growing shock and awe.  Only one of the assailants seemed to carry a weapon, and she was remarkably small, darting and sliding under legs to deftly relieve her opponents of their weapons.  The others all fought barehanded, with a shocking grace and elegance, like they were in the midst of some elaborate dance. All of them wore fancy masks, with feathers and carvings and gemstones for eyes.

A torch fell into the water and sizzled, and then the air was full of a burst of steam.  There were a few cries of pain, the last torch fell to the ground and was stamped out, and then, just as quickly, there was silence.

Ray stood in the dark, staring, wondering what she’d just witnessed.

Then as silently as an animal, a woman appeared beside her once again.

“You all right, love?” she said.

Ray jumped with surprise, eyes widening.  How had she come across the stream without making any noise??

“I’m...I’m fine,” she said.  “It seems I owe you...and your friends...my thanks.”

The woman clapped Ray on the back, almost toppling her into the water.

“Oh, it’s no big thing, love!  It’s our job, after all. You hurt at all?  Come along, we’ll show you to our camp. Promise you won’t be awakened rudely this time.”

Ray was so surprised and shocked that she didn’t have the mind to refuse.  A small shadow waded through the water towards her, holding Ray’s pack.

“Is this yours, miss?”

Ray was even more shocked to hear how young the voice was.  She accepted the pack back, and tried to squint through the dark to see her, but it was hard to tell how old the girl actually was.

She had no idea what she’d just stumbled into this time, she thought.  But...they had come to her rescue. Perhaps she could trust them.

“Crimson Fox?  Is the lady all right?”

The woman beside Ray grinned, and Ray realized that she hadn’t seen the glint of her eyes at all — just the glint of the light over her mask’s gemstone eyes.

An even shorter woman crossed the river and stood before Ray, glancing over her.

“Looks right as rain, boss,” Crimson Fox said.  “Miss, this is the leader of our little band. Blue Cat.”

The woman tilted her head, and Ray could only see her grin in the glint of the moon over her teeth.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said, sweeping a bow.  She was actually wearing a long belt off her back like a sort of tail.  If they were going for a theme, perhaps it was working.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well,” Ray said.  “I seem to owe you gratitude.”

The woman laughed lightly, shaking her head.

“It’s what we do, love,” she said.  “Now, perhaps you’d like a bit of rest after that?  Our camp isn’t far. You’re welcome to join us.”

Ray thought about it.  The alternative was continuing to walk without pause, and perhaps meeting more like the bandits before.  These women might have better information for her going ahead anyway.

“I’d be grateful,” she said.  “Lead on.”

* * *

The women’s camp wasn’t very far at all.  They climbed over two hills, and there it was, glimmering in the firelight.  She could see a covered wagon parked nearby, a pair of horses grazing off on a nearby hill, and a collection of barrels and crates stacked up.  One slender shadow was moving around the first, and a taller, lankier one sat on the boxes, looking as though they were probably sharpening a blade.

Ray hefted her pack down the hill after the women.

As they reached the fire, Blue Cat shed her mask.  Now that they were in the light, Ray could see that the mask was a dark blue, and seemed to have cat ears atop it, the face carved to look like a cat.

“We’re back, Violet!” the woman called.

The woman at the fire looked up.  She was a slender, elegant figure, her dark violet hair short and styled to swoop up, much like a butterfly’s wings.  In fact, she was wearing a pair of fake butterfly wings on her back, and her clothing was swishy and elegant in shades of violet.  A mask hung from her belt, gold and carved with flowers and vines, with antenna sprouting from the top.

“Found someone after all, didn’t you?” Violet said, shaking her head with a smile.  “That intuition of yours, Luna. Are you sure you’re not really a cat?”

“I’m only quite smart,” Blue Cat said — or was her name Luna?  Ray wasn’t sure now. “Is soup finished?”

“Not even an ask for my wellbeing?” Violet said, looking affronted.  “What if  _ I’d _ been set upon by bandits in your absence?”

Luna looked up and down at the camp, and then at the woman sitting on the boxes.  She was incredibly tall and long, her skin a pleasant dark brown, and her dark, dull green hair swooped over one eye.  She was wearing what appeared to be thick gray pelts, wrapped around her legs and draped over her like a cloak. She, too, had a mask hanging from her belt, this one carved in silver to look like a wolf’s face.

“Well, isn’t that why we left Wolf with you?” Luna said.  “Wolf? Did you see any bandits?”

Wolf shook her head, and Luna grinned at Violet.  Violent huffed. Then she turned Ray, all smiles and kindness.

“Are you all right, dear?  Luna said she thought someone might be getting harrassed tonight.  You haven’t been hurt, have you?”

“I...no.  I’m fine,” Ray said quickly.  “I’m very grateful to you all for your help.”

She hesitated, and then shifted her pack forward.

“I...have plenty to contribute to your meal, as well, as thanks.”

“Free food!” the taller woman beside Ray said, clapping her hands.  “I knew we did this for a reason!”

“Oh, posh!  You needn’t give up your stores, we have plenty,” Violet said.

“Please.  I really insist...it’s the least I can do in return,” said Ray.

What odd, eccentric people.  Ray found herself fighting back a smile.  She was having...fun, despite what had happened to her before.

“Well, if you insist, I won’t argue,” Violet said, beckoning Ray forwards.  She dug around through the pack, looking surprised at how much there actually was.  She beckoned for Ray to sit at one of the small lumps around the fire, which Ray found to be cushions.  The others of the small party joined her, chattering around and over her head.

“Don’t be rude,” the woman called Wolf said softly.  “Shouldn’t you introduce yourselves to our guest?”

The chatter halted for a moment.  Then Luna laughed.

“Oh, we got ahead of ourselves!” she said.  She spun in her seat to face Ray. Luna was a small, spritely thing, but despite her stature, she was clearly a woman in her late twenties, early thirties.  She had a mischievous grin and sparkling eyes, her dark blue hair short and frizzy. Her cat mask hung around her neck, and she was dressed all in dark blues.  “My name is Luna, though all the tales will call me Blue Cat — the terror of all slavers everywhere.”

“Oh, so there’ll be songs sung about you now, will there?” Violet jabbed at her.

“Already are,” said Luna breezily. 

The taller woman from the rescue before leaned in on Ray, almost draping over her shoulder.  She was long and slender, and still wearing her mask, which was bronze and carved to look like a fox’s face.  She was draped in dark red cloth, and even had a pair of bushy foxes’ tails hanging from her belt. Her dark red hair draped down her back in a luscious wave.

“I’m Crimson Fox,” she said.  “I go by Crimson.”

She almost purred as she leaned onto Ray’s shoulder, and Ray couldn’t help but laugh a bit.  Crimson seemed pleased by the reaction and began to play with one of Ray’s pigtails.

A shorter and younger woman, maybe in her mid twenties, leaned forward.  She was pale, her long white hair falling down her back. She, too, was still wearing her mask, which was white and carved like a rabbit, with big ears poking from the top.  She pulled it down, though, revealing bright yellow eyes and sweet smile.

“I’m the White Rabbit,” she said.  “But you can call me Bunny! That’s what everyone calls me.”

“It’s good to meet you, Bunny.”

The tiniest of the group, the little girl who’d given Ray her pack back, sat on her knees near Bunny.  Her mask hung around her neck, and it had a bill poking out of its gold face, like a bird. She had soft looking blond hair that curled short around her ears, her skin dark and her eyes a light brown.  She smiled shyly at Ray, and Bunny draped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her.

“And this cute thing is Duckie, our Kaleido Chick!”

The girl ducked her head and mumbled a hello.

“And then you’ve heard I’m Violet,” said Violet, gesturing to herself with the spoon.  “I’m the Purple Butterfly, in Luna’s inane, romantic attempts at us being like something out of a story book.  And over there, that’s Wolf.”

Wolf inclined her head, and Ray bowed back from her seat.

“And are you...all some kind of warriors?” Ray said.  “You certainly have a theme going on here.”

Luna grinned, but Bunny answered.

“Oh!! Yes, we are!  We’re the Guardians of the Moon!”

Violet snorted, as though that were the stupidest thing she’d ever heard, but she was smiling.

“Luna brought us all together,” said Crimson.  “We were drifters, kidnapped or lost on our own at one point.”

“We fight the bad guys now,” said Duckie.

“Luna has some grand ideas of us becoming the world’s next greatest song, told by bards and ballads all over,” Crimson said, still leaning into Ray.

“And we will!” Luna insisted.  “Word spreads even now! We’ll make all the slavers fear us one day.”

She shot Ray a smile, as the others all laughed good-naturedly.  Ray had to smile back. What a light, calm atmosphere these “Guardians of the Moon” had about them.  She felt more relaxed than she had in days, since she’d left the Corkoro behind.

“And what about you, love?  What’s your name?” said Luna, leaning her face on her hands.

Ray only hesitated then.  Because what  _ was _ the right answer to this?  

She saw something sparkle in Luna’s eyes, and for some strange reason, Ray felt as though she couldn’t lie to her.  Was Luna Blessed? Ray certainly felt fragments of her power all around this little group.

But she smiled.

“I’m Ray,” she said.  “And I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”


	9. NINE

The Guardians of the Moon, as they called themselves, were certainly not the quiet, calm, and restrained people that the Corkoro had been.

“Wolf, give me your flask, mine’s run out,” Crimson yelled up through the canvas that covered the cart.

Wolf responded by stretching her hand down from the roof of the cart to give Crimson a very obscene gesture.  Bunny and Duckie both erupted with giggles as Crimson swore at Wolf with a variety of languages and flourishes.

“Honestly, Crimson!  It’s the middle of the day!” Violet snapped, looking back over her shoulder from where she sat at the front of the cart, guiding the horses.  “Save the drinking for nighttime!”

“You know I can’t do that, Vi; I need to be fresh and alert at night!  We’re the Guardians of the  _ Moon _ , not the Sun,” Crimson said, throwing herself dramatically to the floor of the cart.

Ray couldn’t help but snigger along with the rest of them, and even Luna looked back to shoot them all a wink from where she sat beside Violet.

“You’re such a bad influence on the younger ones,” Violet moaned, shaking her head.

“No she’s not!” Duckie said.

“She’s an excellent influence!!” Bunny said, and then the two of them dissolved into giggling again, falling against each other on the bench across from Ray.

Violet made an offended sound, at which Luna spun in her chair to face everyone, wiggling her eyebrows.  She immediately launched into a loud chorus of a song in a different language — an old one, one that Ray remembered being in use when she was among humans, and one that she switched to easily.  

_ “As I was a-goin’ over that old mountain spire, I spied the fair old colonel, and his money he was countin’.” _

Duckie and Bunny immediately joined in, clearly having heard this one before.

“First I drew my daggers, and then I drew my sword, sayin’ ‘stand and deliver, for I am your bold receiver!’”

Crimson sat up to join in as well, waving her empty flask back and forth with her cheeks flushed almost as red as her hair.

“Musha ringum duram da, whack fol the daddy-o, there’s whiskey in the jar!”

“Do you know this one?” Luna shot at Ray, who jumped a little.  The others kept singing, and even Violet’s light, sweet voice joined in.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Ray said.

“Well, that’s no good!  Can’t have a good traveling song without everyone singin’ together.  What songs do you know?”

It had been many, many years, decades, even, since Ray had thought of music.  It had never been her area of expertise — she was always more into learning and teaching the maths and sciences, or architecture and agriculture.  Zarc had been the artistic one, marveling over painters and sculptors, and spending hours listening to poets and musicians. But she tried to think.  What songs had Zarc loved? He’d sung the ones he liked the most to her at night while they’d laid together, after they’d spent hours discussing all of the incredible things they’d seen that day, that they’d learned from the humans or that they’d taught them.

“I...don’t know many,” Ray said.

“Well, teach us one you know!” Bunny said, leaning forward eagerly.  “Especially if you’ve heard any new ones about us. I love those best!”

“Sing a song, sing a song!” Duckie said, hopping up and down in her seat.

Wolf even swung herself over from the top of the cart, landing lightly to sit at the back with her legs dangling over the side.  Ray bit her lip, feeling her stomach twist with embarrassment. They were all looking at her now and expecting something! She couldn’t even think of a song, much less sing it.  Was she even very good at singing? She’d really never tried.

“Go on, love,” Luna said.  “It doesn’t matter what kind of song it is.  We love hearing new ones.”

Ray blushed. Luna’s voice was gentle and non-judgmental.  Geez. If only her worshippers could see their goddess now — fumbling with embarrassment to think of something to sing.

A faint memory came back to her, then, of a quiet starry night, with Zarc’s head leaning on hers.  She remembered the way she’d felt his chest vibrating when he sang, softly, twisting his song into the stars.   _ He’d _ had a beautiful voice, she thought with some distant sadness.

Before she could think better of it, she began to sing very softly.

“Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning, close by the window young Eileen is spinning.  While bent o’er the fire her blind grandmother sitting.”

Crimson hummed along with her, leaning back down to lay down with her head on her hand, propped up by her elbow as she gestured one hand slowly through the air with the rhythm.

“Eileen, a chara, I hear someone tapping. ‘Tis the ivy, dear mother, against the glass flapping.”

Bunny and Duckie each began to hum a perfect harmony, and bolstered, Ray sang a little louder.

“Eileen, I surely hear somebody sighing.”

“‘Tis the sound, mother dear, of the autumn winds dying,” Luna sang in response.

Ray was startled that they seemed to know this song, but she continued, starting to fall into the rhythm.  Even Wolf was starting to hum, and Violet joined into the next line.

“There’s a form at the casement, the form of her true love, and he whispers with face bent I’m waiting for you, love.”

Luna began to drum lightly on the wood to keep the melody, as Duckie and Bunny each added their voices for the final verse.

“Get up from the stool, through the lattice step lightly, and we’ll rove in the grove while the moon’s shining brightly.  Ere the reel and the wheel stop their ringing and moving, through the grove the young lovers by moonlight are roving.”

The music seemed to cling to Ray’s ears long after everyone had finished singing.  For the briefest moment, she felt warmth in her chest, and tears in her eyes. For just a breath, she was back there — on that hill, looking up at all the stars, with Zarc’s hand in hers as he sang her all the songs he’d fallen in love with.  He felt so close that she could smell his soft, piney scent and feel the shape of his hand in hers, she could almost taste the sound of his voice like a kiss on her lips.

But the moment faded, and she was back in the Guardians’ cart.  All she could hear, then, was the clopping of the horses across the packed earth, and the rattle of the cart wheels along the grassy hills beneath them.

“It sounds sad, almost,” Duckie said, tapping a finger to her lips.

“I’ve heard that one before, but it seemed more melancholy the way you knew it,” said Bunny.

“I’m just surprised you knew it at all,” Ray said.  “It’s...it’s a  _ very _ old one.”

She found her eyes glancing to Luna, and she was taken aback by the light, almost knowing smile on the woman’s lips.

“I know a lot of songs,” she said, turning back around in her seat to face forward with Violet again.  “I just had a feeling it was one that you needed to sing right now.”

Ray’s lips parted with a question she didn’t know how to ask.  She closed her mouth again, and folded her hands back into her lap.  The others didn’t sing anymore, as they continued on and on.

* * *

“So where are you headed, anyway, Ray?”

Ray peered out through the flaps of the cart.  The sky was low and gray, and she could smell rain in the far distance.  A faint rumble of thunder echoed over an endless hill, and she shivered with anticipation.

Luna brushed one of the two horses, eyes flicking over to Ray.  The others were out and about, hunting down food or supplies or scouting ahead.  It was just Ray and Luna.

“The same direction you’ve been headed,” Ray said.

“I know that.  You’ve tagged along with us all this way.  But soon, we’ll turn back, make our way across the plains in the other direction to cut off the slave caravans.  You won’t be joining us.”

Ray frowned at her with some surprise.

“You seem very certain of what I plan on doing,” Ray said.

Luna shot her smile and a wink.  Her horse turned its head around to nibble at her shoulder for treats, and she lightly bopped its nose away.

“I know that you have somewhere you need to go,” Luna said.

Ray looked down at the grass beneath her.  They’d been on the plains for two days now.  Two days full of laughter and music. She’d woken up twice now to find them already clustered around a campfire, laughing and trading jokes, Duckie running over to her as soon as she was awake, eager to tell her all about the raid they’d just made that night, or to introduce her to a couple of rescued people joining them for breakfast, before they were directed to the nearest town for safety.  

She’d not seen hide nor hair of the bandits they’d fought except the ones they’d rescued her from, and when she’d suggested helping them out one night, all of them had quickly told her that it was unnecessary.  As much as she believed in their missions, she was privately glad — she didn’t know how she’d feel about holding a weapon again.

It had been some of the most freeing days of her life.  After the gentleness of the Corkoro to bolster her spirit, it was almost like the boisterous love of life that the Guardians had was exactly what she had needed.  As much as she wanted to get to Zarc...she felt sad about leaving them

Ray swung her legs out over the side of the cart, sitting on the edge to look off into the distance.  At the very, very bottom of the horizon, she could just make out the stain of mountains. There. That was where Zarc was waiting for her.  It would probably be another week on foot, faster if she was in the cart with them, if they went that far.

“How did you know to come help me that night, Luna?” Ray asked.

Luna circled the brush against the horse’s flank, the other hand resting lightly on its smooth fur.

“Because I did.  I knew someone needed help.”

Ray’s eyes turned to Luna, but Luna didn’t look right at her.

“You’re Blessed, aren’t you?” she said.

“That’s what they call it,” Luna quipped.

Ray felt her stomach turning with anxiety, and she hugged herself.

“Luna.  Do you...know who I am?”

Luna finally stopped brushing the horse.  She stood there for a moment, hands still on the horse’s flank, staring down at its glistening brown fur.  Then she stepped back, patting it briefly. It immediately stepped away to begin grazing. Luna turned towards Ray.  Her quick, gold-green eyes fixed onto Ray’s.

Then she smiled.

“Like I said,” she said.  “I knew there was someone out here who needed some help.  Maybe a lot of it.”

Ray felt something inside her unfurl.  Luna knew.

Luna turned to hop backwards, landing on the cart beside Ray.  She leaned forward on her thighs.

“I’ll admit part of it was curiosity,” Luna said.  “Getting a sense of intuition that the goddess herself is out here, and needs help?  What is she like, after all?”

She turned her head towards Ray, smiling.

“And what I found was that she wasn’t much different than the rest of us.”

Ray’s eyes bubbled with tears.

“The whole time.  You knew.”

Luna nodded.

“What about the others?”

“They don’t.  They don’t even know what my Blessing is.  They just think I have ‘a cat’s intuition.’”

She tapped her forehead with one finger, and Ray felt herself relax.  Something about Luna’s easy demeanor just put her at ease.

“So then...why did you pretend?” Ray said.  “That you didn’t know?”

Luna shrugged.

“I can’t help knowing things, but I guess I wanted to get to know you as you.  Not as someone trying to be someone else.”

“Did it work?”

Luna’s lips split in a huge smile.

“Yeah,” she said.  “I think it did.”

Ray couldn’t help but find herself smiling back.

“You’re doing really amazing things out here, you know?” Ray said.  “Helping all these people. And I...I’m just going to leave you all again.”

Luna laughed.

“I think you’ve helped enough,” she said, punching Ray lightly on the shoulder.  “After all, you had to give up everything so that we could keep living our short little lives.”

Luna leaned back on her hands, and overhead, the sky rolled with thunder.

"But that's all right.  After all, it's due to you and your partner that we were able to exist in the first place.  So I think you've done enough.  Let us humans take care of ourselves, now."

She tilted her head back to look at Ray with a smile very like a cat's.  Ray understood why she had chosen her thief's name.

“Just don’t forget about us, yeah?” Luna said.  “Keep us all in your thoughts here and there, goddess.  And smile a little bit more. You deserve it.”

Ray shook her head, feeling her smile soften.

“I don’t believe that I could forget,” she said.  “After all...it’s been so long. And somehow, I seem to have met all of the best humans in the world.”

Luna actually bellowed with laughter.

“Well, I’ll have to tell someone to put that in all the ballads about me!” she said, chortling.  “The goddess herself said that about me!”

Ray couldn’t help but laugh along with her, the two of them laughing and laughing until their stomachs hurt and they could barely breathe.  The rain began to drizzle down over their knees still hanging out of the cart, but Ray didn’t pull herself back in.

“If you have my knowing,” she said, when her air was back and their laughter had faded into the sound of the rain.  “Do you know how I can get this off of me?”

She pointed at the chain on her ankle, and Luna looked down at it.

“Unfortunately, what I know all comes and goes,” Luna said.  “But...yeah. I think I do.”

She stretched her arms back as Ray’s heart leaped.

“I don’t think I can do it,” she said.  “But I know where you can find someone who can.  And it just so happens that we’re going to be taking our little cart all the way there before we turn around.  We’ll drop you off there.”

Ray couldn’t help it.  She reached out and took Luna’s hand, holding it for a moment.  Luna smiled, twisting her hand around to grip Ray’s hand back.

“Thank you,” Ray said, her throat full of tears.  “I don’t deserve your kindness.”

Luna only laughed. 

“No one  _ deserves _ kindness,” Luna said.  “Because it’s not something that you have to deserve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: I totally forgot to give credit where it was due; the song lyrics are slightly altered versions of traditional Irish folk songs, "Whiskey in the Jar" and "The Spinning Wheel" respectively!


	10. TEN

The city was unlike any she’d ever seen, and Ray couldn’t help but stare in absolute awe.  How had humans learned to build such incredibly tall buildings? And what was that smell? It didn’t smell like steam power, or even coal — what was powering those little vehicles that didn’t have any horses??

She was so in awe of the place before her that she almost fell off the cart when it came to a stop.  She blushed as she gripped the bench hard to keep herself on her seat.

“This is as far as we go, Ray,” Luna said.

Ray blinked, tearing her eyes away from the city to look back at the rest of them.  Crimson nursed her flask, swirling it around in one hand while she looked at the city with narrowed eyes.  Duckie and Bunny shrank back into their seats, clinging onto each other’s hands, and Violet’s knuckles were white where they gripped the reins.  Wolf was as unreadable as ever, but Ray could sense a bit of tension in her.

She looked back down to Luna, whose sharp eyes met hers with all of the quick intelligence Ray had come to expect from her.

“There’s something wrong here, isn’t there?” Ray said quietly.

“There’s something wrong everywhere,” Luna said.  “But...Shlassen isn’t a safe city for us. Especially not now.”

Ray wanted to ask more, but she felt an itch in her feet and her heart — she was close to Sanctuary again.  She could feel it. Zarc was getting closer. She wouldn’t be here long — just long enough to find the person that Luna said must be here, who could help her take off her chain.

So instead, she just leaned down, and hugged Luna as tight as she could manage.  Luna froze up with surprise at first. Then Ray could sense her smile and relax, and her arms wrapped back around Ray’s waist.

“Do you have to go?” Duckie cried, crawling across the cart towards Ray.  “I don’t want you to go, Miss Ray!”

Ray smiled sadly, releasing Luna and reaching out to grip both of Duckie’s hand.

“Not everyone stays in your life forever,” she said, smiling gently.  “But that doesn’t mean I won’t remember our time together forever.”

Duckie’s eyes welled up with tears, and she threw her arms around Ray’s shoulders.  Ray held her tiny, shaking body for a few moments. Then Bunny jumped into the hug, and Wolf reached down from the top of the cart to put a hand on Ray’s shoulder.  When Ray finally extracted herself from the hug, feeling tears in her own eyes as well, she caught Crimson’s eye. Crimson shot her a smile and raised her flask in Ray’s direction.  Ray bowed her head back.

Violet reached for her hand then, gripping it briefly.

“Take care out there, my dear,” she said.  “We’ll miss you and your voice at our campfires.”

“And I’ll miss you as well,” Ray said.  “I won’t forget the songs of you all.”

Duckie sniffled, crumpling into Bunny’s arms, and Ray felt as though her heart were being torn in two directions — one to them, and one back to Zarc.

But she knew what she was.  And even if Zarc were not waiting for her, this was not the place for her to stay.

She turned back to Luna, who fixed her with a more serious stare.

“You’ll find the one you’re looking for after passing through the city center,” she said.  “And...be careful, Ray. This place is...things will be happening here soon. Try to leave before they do.”

Ray’s lips parted, her brow furrowing.  Even she had never had the power to see the future, so what did Luna know that she did not?

Luna’s eyes wandered back down towards the city, and in answer to Ray’s unspoken question, she spoke again.

“You don’t need to have the gift of knowledge to know when a city is on the verge of breaking,” she said softly.

Then she turned back to Ray and gripped her hands.

“Life bless you,” she said.  “We’ll sing of you.”

“If you do, sing only of the me I was with you,” Ray said, squeezing Luna’s hands back.  “Not of who I was.”

Luna smiled, her whole face lighting up with the expression.

“Of course,” she said, dancing back and jumping backwards to land on the seat beside Violet.  “That’s the most important you to us, after all.”

Ray smiled, feeling her heart breaking again.  Once again, she was leaving behind the good ones, and it hurt to do so.  Zarc was waiting for her, but...she didn’t want to leave them behind, either.  She could only pray that the universe, that this cruel unfeeling world, would be good to them, for as long as it could be.

She inclined her head deeply, and as one, the Guardians of the Moon bowed to her as well.  Then Violet clucked her tongue, tapped at their horse with its reins, and the cart turned around.  Ray watched them turn, and waved once more to a crying Duckie and Bunny.

Then she turned around, rather than watch them disappear into the distance.  She turned towards the city, and Zarc, instead.

* * *

Ray understood what Luna’s words meant only moments after she reached the city center.

Where the rest of the city had seemed almost strangely empty, with only a few quick moving, bustling city-dwellers who kept their heads low and their gazes short, the city center was packed to almost bursting.  She heard shouts without hearing the words, the sound of people screaming and stomping their feet, hundreds of someones pounding their hands against something metal. Someone was drumming, and a few others were shouting out a call and response that she couldn’t make out the words of.

Ray tried to keep her head low, weaving between people and attracting as little attention as possible.  The bodies were so tightly packed in here, the smell of body odor and sweat was so strong that it was hard to breathe.  People surged back and forth in small groups, and Ray was jostled.

She could practically smell the tension, the storm clouds getting ready to explode.

_ “You will all disperse now!” _ someone shouted into something that expanded their voice.  There were a group of people dressed in plate armor and helmets standing on a large stage near the front of the crowd, though Ray could barely see them.   _ “This is in direct violation of the code of assembly!  You will disperse now!” _

Someone threw a tomato at the man speaking and it splattered over his face.  The crowd cheered, and someone yelled. More tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables started to fly through the air.

Ray’s skin crawled, and her mouth went dry.  She had done everything in her power to avoid human conflict, to stay far away from their wars and their fights.  She’d tried, once or twice, a very long time ago, to mediate for them. But any time she’d mediated in favor of one side or the other, that side would take her words to mean that they were  _ better  _ than the others, and in less than a few years, that side would have taken it upon themselves to completely dominate or decimate the other.  She left humans to solve their own problems after that. Only Zarc had continued to try.

It felt, suddenly, as though it had been  _ years  _ since she had seen the Guardians of the Moon.  Their easy cheer seemed so far away, while she was packed in tightly with a crowd of growing storm clouds that were getting ready to explode.  Her throat tightened, and her hands started to shake.

The whole crowd surged forwards and back, making her stumble along with it.  She couldn’t get through — the shouts were getting louder and more angry and she could practically smell the scent of a fight about to break out.  A cold sweat broke out over the back of her neck — she didn’t even know what this conflict was about, she didn’t know which side she was supposed to be on, she didn’t — 

She heard a soft, strangled cry somewhere beneath the roar of the crowd, and her head snapped around.  She saw one of the heads in the crowd go down, and through the sardine packing of bodies, she could see a small, round woman had fallen down.  The crowd surged forward again, with no concern for those who might have stumbled, and Ray heard the woman cry out again. She was going to get  _ trampled _ at this rate!

A set of legs surged in between her and her view of the woman on the ground, and Ray swore.

“Hey!” she tried to shout.  “Hey! Someone fell down!”

But no one could hear her over the roar of the crowd, and as she tried to push herself between the packed bodies, she lost her balance.  She cried out as she, too, tumbled to the ground, and a crowd of feet and legs all surged about her, one kicking her in the chest before she could even think of getting herself back up, another crushing against the back of her knuckles.  She could barely even breathe in the thick scent of bodies, much less get herself up through the twisted tangle of limbs that pressed her in on all sides!

Just when Ray thought she couldn’t handle another second, that she was simply going to be trapped here and trampled until people finally dispersed and left behind the other trampled bodies who weren’t so lucky as to be immortal like her, she smelled the faint scent of peppermint, brought along with a sharp, cool breeze that cut through the crowd.

No one else seemed to notice in the wild, frenzied rush of back and forth, but Ray felt the air against her back almost solidify, felt a cold breath against the back of her neck, and as though a whirlwind had sprouted against her back, she was shoved upwards by a column of wind.  The wind seemed to wrap around her wrists and legs, popping her back up to her feet. She saw the flushed face of the other woman who had fallen briefly bounce up above the rest of the crowd, her eyes wide and her lips forming an ‘o’ of surprise, and then she dropped neatly back down to her feet, safely back up in the middle of the crowd.

But the wind didn’t stop this time, tugging at Ray’s pigtails, twisting between the hot bodies and cooling everything down to a faint wintery chill against Ray’s arms.  She saw a few people move with surprise as the wind cracked between them, moving backwards or forwards against the breeze that shoved at them.

All at once, Ray saw a thin path between the packed bodies open up, from the wind that pushed at them.

The other woman was safe, so Ray didn’t hesitate.  She pushed through the thin trail, twisting her body sideways to follow the breeze as it continued to blow behind her back, as thoug urging her on.

She reached the outside of the crowd, and immediately dropped to her knees, skidding against the cobblestones and coughing to breathe the clear, cool air.  Her hair slid over her shoulders and dangled over the dirty cobblestones while she tried desperately to breathe.

She flinched when she felt a hand on her back, but the hand was soft and soothing, rubbing small circles against her shoulder blades.

“There, there, see, you made it through,” came a light, cheery voice.  “Bit of a tight fit in there, isn’t it! Everyone’s quite kerfuffled!”

Ray coughed once more into her hand, and then squinted through her tear-blurred eyes up at the person who was speaking to her.

They were a small, round-faced person, with a thick swoop of mint colored bangs falling over one eye, the other dark violet eye glimmering at her.  They extended a hand to Ray, and tentatively, Ray took it. She gasped as she felt another gust of wind against her back, helping her pop up to her feet with more ease than she thought her limbs would be able to handle.

Her rescuer’s smile split their chubby cheeks, and they stuck out their tongue at her playfully.

“All right there?” they asked.  “You looked like you weren’t a part of things in there, so I thought I’d give you a hand.”

The person was much shorter than Ray, and dressed in colorful but grubby scarves.  A tall, wide brimmed hat sat atop their fluffy hair, and their skin was so pale that they almost looked like they didn’t have any heat within them.

“I...was the wind from you?” Ray said.

They smiled even more brightly, and swirled one finger through the air.  A little whirlwind burst from their finger tip, and they flicked it towards Ray’s face.  Ray jumped back, eyes wide, but the little whirlwind only expanded, swirling playfully about her face before dissipating.

“The name is Belle,” they said, sweeping a low bow at her.  “The world’s greatest performer and magician, at your service!”

Blessed, Ray thought, nodding slowly.  This “Belle” seemed to have inherited Ray’s power over the winds, though in a much less powerful sense.  In fact, as Ray became more attuned to the sense of Blessing within the magician’s soul, she wondered briefly if perhaps some of her more powerful abilities might not have split up even further.  Perhaps there were others in the world with a sliver of Ray’s power over the wind or the sea, all of it fragmented into manageable pieces for a human soul.

“Well, you’ve already done me a great service,” Ray said.  “I don’t know that I would have made it out of there myself.”

She shot a nervous glance back at the crowd, still feeling a cold sweat pooled at the base of her neck.  Belle grabbed her hand, startling her from her look.

“Come,” they said.  “Let’s talk elsewhere!  It’s too noisy here.”

Belle dragged Ray down the small street, and as they wound through increasingly tight alleys, the sounds of the roaring crowd faded into the distance.

“What is happening here?” Ray asked.  “Why were they all so agitated?”

“Oh, there are plenty of reasons,” Belle said back, as breezily as though they were discussing the weather.  “The taxes are too high, the police are given too much power and not held accountable for their violence towards civilians, the laws are oppressing the people beyond what they can stand.”

Ray shivered.  A revolution — it seemed she’d walked into a city about to explode.

“Are they planning on overthrowing the king?”

“Perhaps!  I’m not sure myself — only passing through.”

They finally popped out of the twisting alleys, and out onto a wider, cleaner looking street.  This was a far cry from the parts of the city that Ray had already seen; where the outskirts had been full of nervous people who didn’t make eye contact, and the square full of people practically salivating for a revolution, everything here seemed...normal.  There were brightly colored shops with fine-clothed people walking in and out of them, flowers growing in beds along the streets, children running after their parents and laughing. For a moment, Ray was stunned into silence by how different it was.

“Have we traveled to another city?” she said, dumbfounded.

Belle just cracked a half smile.

“There are always many sides to a society,” they said.  “Take a look, though, and you’ll see that they’re all one and the same.”

Ray’s lips parted.  She looked out into the brightly colored shop fronts again.

She saw what Belle meant quickly.  Despite the fine look of the buildings and the people who used them, there were heavily armed guards standing in between nearly every shop.  The roads were cracked in places, and one woman in a fine dress quickly grabbed hold of her son and dragged him away from a shabbily-dressed woman who crouched on the side of a building, hands held out for coins.  She wasn’t the only one begging, either, Ray could see others peeking furtively from alleys, a few dead-eyed children standing alongside someone who might be their father with a hat overturned in front of them.

The woman in the fine dress hurried over to one of the guards, and Ray watched her talking quickly, gripping her son’s arm with one hand and pointing furtively at the woman, looking frightened.  Ray’s heart clenched. Ah...yes. She’d seen scenes like this before. She felt her throat dry up as she watched the guard nod, and start to walk towards the woman.

The woman’s eyes widened when she saw the guard coming, and she tried to wobble to her feet.  Ray took a step forward. Belle squeezed her hand.

“Hold on,” Belle said softly.  “We mustn’t make a scene. It will only hurt her more.”

“But that guard is going to hurt her,” Ray said.

“Shhh,” Belle said, and they smiled, putting a finger to their lips.  “I didn’t say we were going to let him.”

They released Ray’s hand.  Immediately, the scarves draped all over them began to flap with a faint breeze.  As fluid as water, perhaps by using wind beneath their feet to help them glide, Belle slid out across the street.  One of their scarves snapped off of their shoulders, shooting across in the wind to smack the guard in the face, covering his eyes.  He swore, pawing at his face.

“Oh, heavens!!” Belle cried.  “Thank you so much for catching that for me!  It’s breezy today, isn’t it?”

The woman tried to take her chance to move, but it was clear that her legs weren’t strong enough.  Ray didn’t bother to wait and see what the rest of Belle’s plan was. She hurried across the street and took the woman under the arm.  The woman’s eyes widened and she flinched — up this close, Ray could see just how sharp her cheekbones were, and her heart squeezed.

“Where is a safe place for you to hide?” she whispered.

The woman’s mouth hung open for a half second.  Then with a trembling hand, she pointed towards the nearest alley.  Ray pulled her arm over her shoulder, and limped along as fast as she could, pulling the woman down into the alley.

It was dark down this way, and the scent of trash and sewage assaulted Ray’s nose.  She coughed against it.

“There’s...there’s a camp at the end of this way,” the woman mumbled in a heavy accent.  “You don’t need to take me the whole way.”

Before Ray could respond, she heard Belle’s cheery voice behind her.

“Nonsense!  We’ll escort you, my fine lady.”

Ray had no idea how Belle had caught up so quickly, but she didn’t bother asking.  She just nodded, and one step at a time, they made their way into the deep and darkening paths of the city.

The scent of garbage turned to the smell of something burning, and as they took another turn, Ray saw a small ramshackle village built into the backs of buildings with boxes and scrap metal.  A barrel filled with fire stood in the middle, and a few stood around it to warm their hands.

One saw Ray coming along with the woman, and immediately bolted over to her.  The two began to speak quickly in another language, one that Ray was too tired to try and remember how to understand, so she just gently helped the woman transfer her grip to the young man.  The woman spoke again, gesturing at Ray and Belle beside her. The young man turned to them with faint tears in his eyes.

“She says you helped her escape a beating,” he said in the same accent.  “I cannot thank you enough. My mother isn’t well enough to take another punishment.”

“ _ Another _ ?” Ray said incredulously.  “For asking for help?”

The young man’s lips tightened, and his eyes cast downward.  Ray felt sick. She looked down at the ground, uncertain of what she could say.

She was supposed to be a  _ goddess _ .  But yet...she couldn’t help a single person.  Couldn’t she do something? March up to that palace and tell the king exactly how to take care of his people?  Start wielding some of that godly authority people had once put in her?

She couldn’t...she couldn’t just leave them like this.

“Now, now, no need for a frown!” Belle said with cheer, bouncing forward.  “How about a magic trick or two?”

And they tossed one of their scarves in the air, and then another, and the two began to undulate in their carefully orchestrated breezes, twisting and twirling about each other to create different colors.

A few surprised oohs broke out from the others at the fire, who had looked up at the commotion of the woman and her son.  Someone peeked a head out of one of the lean-tos.

Belle smiled widely, and added another scarf to the mix.  They spun and dipped, throwing their scarves up and down and sending them soaring around the slowly growing crowd of spectators, drawing more of the tired, ragged people from their homes to watch with a faint awe.  A handful of dirty children ran out, trying to chase the scarves with laughter.

And Ray just hung back, watching with a growing lump of tears in her throat.  They were all smiling. They all looked tired, cold, and hungry, but they were smiling as they watched Belle’s show.  Some of them began to clap and cheer — their entire faces lit up, and it was as though Ray could see the people they were meant to be beneath the grime and hunger, just for a moment.

_ This is my fault,  _ Ray thought, hugging her suddenly sick stomach.   _ I abandoned them.  All of them. I left them behind.  I didn’t do a thing to help any of these people.  I...it was because of me that they exist, and I don’t...I can’t even protect any of them. _

Tears blurred her eyes, and she pressed a hand to her mouth so as not to draw attention to herself.  Her knees shook. She dug her hand against her churing stomach.

Through the haze of her tears, she heard people applauding and clapping, and she looked up to see Belle bowing.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” they cried, having all of their scarves blow right back around their neck.  “I’m so glad to see so many happy faces out there!”

Someone came forward to try and give her a dirty coin, but Belle just smiled and waved it off.

“Oh, no, no, no, this show’s admission was only your smiles.  And I’ve been paid in full in that regard!”

“At least come and share something to eat with us,” one asked.  “It’s not much, but we can’t let you both go empty handed.”

Ray quickly leaned back, starting to shake her head — she could absolutely not take anything away from these people — but Belle grabbed her arm and pulled her forward with a big grin.

“I think it would be rude to say no,” they said.  “We thank you, good people, for your kindness.”

Ray felt so weak and sick.  She didn’t have it in her to try to argue, so she let Belle bustle her off where the others indicated, let Belle stuff a bowl of watery soup into her hands, and let herself be pushed to sit down on an overturned box.

Someone pulled out an old stringed instrument and began to play, while a few others joined in with uneven voices.  Ray’s eyes blurred with tears again as she recognized the song — it was about the Guardians of the Moon. Luna would be so pleased.

She stared down at her bowl of soup while Belle started another scarf show, and a few people started to spin and dance to the music at Belle’s prompting.  It wasn’t...none of this was fair. These short, happy moments wouldn’t last. They’d go back to living in a city with no future. And Ray could do nothing to help them.

She felt rather than saw Belle drop down beside her, their breaths heavy and their eyes light.  They poked her in the side with an elbow.

“Come on there, friend, why don’t you have a dance?”

Ray’s fingers tightened on her bowl, and her eyes blurred deeper.

“How do you do it?” she whispered.

Belle blinked, frowning.

“Do what?”

Ray looked up at her, bangs falling over one of her eyes.

“How do you smile?” Ray asked, her voice choked.  “How do you...keep smiling?”

Belle’s face broke into another big smile.  They laughed and leaned back on their hands.

“Because it’s my job!” they said.  “It’s my job to be cheerful and smile, so that I can make others smile in the midst of the sadness.”

“But it won’t last,” Ray whispered.

“That’s why it’s important.”

Ray blinked, lips parting.  Belle grinned, and bopped Ray on the nose, laughing when Ray jumped.  

“Now, I’m not going to quit til I get a smile out of you, miss,” Belle said.  “So come on! Let’s dance.”

Ray looked back down at the bowl on her lap.  Her hands shook.

“But...” Her eyes filled with tears again.  “I...I can’t. I can’t smile.”

Belle tilted their head, their fluffy hair bouncing with their movement.

“Why not?”

Ray shook her head.  She covered her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Because I can’t...I can’t save them,” she whispered.  “I can’t do anything for them at all. I abandoned them...all of them.”

She couldn’t stop talking now, even if Belle, or anyone else, might be listening, might be able to discern the truth behind her words.

“I told myself they didn’t need me anymore.  That they could continue on, without him and me.  But it was only selfishness — I only wanted to disappear.  I said it was because I needed to take care of him, but it was only because I was too tired, because I couldn’t handle being there for any of them anymore. And I’ve...I’ve abandoned all of them to this awful fate.  Life is a cruel gift. I’ve been so cruel.”

Belle tilted their head at Ray.  For a moment, Belle only watched her, while Ray’s tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped into her soup.

Then Belle reached out and took Ray’s hand, twining their fingers into hers.

“Friend,” they said, and this time, when they smiled, there was a deep sadness to it — a deep understanding.  “No one can save everyone.”

Ray shook her head.

“But I’m supposed to be able to,” she whispered.  

She wondered if Belle understood the meaning, or not.  But they didn’t seem to change their look, only tightening their grip on he rhand.

“It sounds like you have someone waiting for you,” they said.  “Will you tell me about him?”

Ray’s lips parted.  

During all her journey, from the convent to the forest, from the Guardians’ cart to here, she had not spoken of Zarc in any way to anyone.  Not even in passing had she talked about him. He was...

She looked down at her knees.

“He is my everything,” she whispered.  “He is so full of love and light that I can’t hope to match.  He wanted to be there for everyone. He wanted to save everyone in a way I never did.  But in the end, they didn’t understand him — and it broke him. And...the world abandoned him.”

She put her free hand to her mouth, her tears rolling down over her fingers.

“Maybe that’s why I abandoned the world back,” she gasped into her fingers.  “As some perverse punishment for hurting him.”

Belle’s thumb rubbed softly against the side of Ray’s hand.

“When I was a child,” Belle said quietly.  “My mother told me an important thing. That when life seems too much to bear, look a little closer.  You’ll see that there are people helping. It will give you strength.”

They turned their eyes up towards the sky, pushed so far away by the tall, leaning buildings.

“And the day when you see no one helping at all, that’s when you know — that this time, it’s your turn.  That only you are the one who has the hands to help.”

Belle raised Ray’s hands to their lips, just letting out a soft breath against her fingers.

“It sounds to me that you’re the only one this person has left,” Belle said.  “You saw that no one helped him. So  _ you  _ did.  I don’t think that means you’ve abandoned anything.”

Ray couldn’t breathe.  She doubled down over her knees, almost knockign the soup from her lap, and cried.  And Belle just hung onto her hand, rubbing their thumb against the back, saying nothing.

“I want to go home,” Ray whispered.  “I want to go back to him. But I don’t want to leave you all behind again.”

Belle transferred their hand to Ray’s back, and then stroked her hair softly.

“Just remember the helpers,” Belle said.  “There are helpers everywhere. And I think it’s okay to trust that they will appear.”

“But what if they don’t?”

Belle smiled when Ray looked up at them.

“Well, I’m still here!” they said with a laugh.  “And if you ever don’t see them, it’s like I said — if they don’t appear, then  _ that’s _ when you know you have no choice.”

They pushed Ray’s pigtail back over her shoulder.

“Until then, my friend...please don’t take the whole world on your back.  That’s too much for everyone. Not even the goddess herself should do that!”

Ray’s breath caught and her eyes widened — did Belle — know?

But there was a faint laugh in the back of Belle’s voice, and they shook their head.  Ray slowly calmed down. Oh. That had been a joke. Belle didn’t know after all.

“I think you should go home, friend,” Belle said.  “If someone is waiting for you, go back to him. Let the rest of us take care of our own for now.”

Ray sat up, looking down at the soup she hadn’t eaten.  Gently, she set it aside on the bench.

“I can’t,” she said.  “Not yet...because...”

She gestured to the chain on her ankle, and Belle looked down at it with a frown.

“That’s not keeping anyone anywhere, friend,” they said.

“It...it prevents me from going home,” Ray said, looking down.  “I know that sounds strange. But I can’t get it off.”

Belle tilted their head again, rubbing their chin.  Ray yelped as a breeze made her leg pop into the air, and Belle grabbed it, looking at the chain.

“Oh my,” Belle said, eyes lightning with recognition.  “Now where did you find yourself with one of these toys on you?”

“It’s a long story.”

Belle winked and smiled.

“I’ll bet.”

Ray suddenly remembered Luna’s words again — her knowing that Ray would find someone who could help her if she went through the city center.  Belle considered the chain for a moment longer.

“You see, the problem with these?  They have the intent to remain,” Belle said.  “So what you need is something with even more intent to remove.”

“Do you...know how?”

Belle’s smile split her bright, round face.

“Oh, of course,” she said.  “I’m a magician, my dear!”

And they pressed their hand to the chain, and Ray felt a sudden burst of ice shoot up her leg, making her briefly white out with the shock.

When she came back to herself, the chain was clattering to the ground, and Belle was releasing her leg with a self-satisfied smile.

“There,” Belle said, dusting off their hands.  “There’s nothing the wind can’t blow away, if it has the mind to remove it.”

Ray flexed her leg, eyes wide.  It...it was gone.

Static ran down her arms and legs, and she could feel her heart turning towards where she wanted to go — the world felt thin and malleable again.  She could go home.

But she hesitated.  She stared up at Belle.

“I...I feel as though I should stay,” she said, feeling her heart ripping in two once again.  “I should do something.”

Belle only smiled, shaking their head. 

“It seems like you have somewhere you belong,” they said.  “Trust in us helpers here. And do the helping that you have to do.”

Ray stood.  She cast her eyes to the people in the little rundown village, still dancing and laughing and singing.  She looked back to Belle.

Zarc needed her.

But so did humanity.

She could not remember the last time her heart had been so divided.

Belle took her hands again and squeezed.

“Friend,” they said, smiling.  “You’re making that look again.  Don’t take the whole world on your shoulders alone.”

Ray twisted her hands to squeeze Belle’s.  They were...too good, she thought. Too good for this world that Ray had made.  But so was Elegy. So was Luscinia. So were Luna, Bunny, Duckie, Crimson, Wolf, Violet.

Maybe...maybe if people like them were still in the world, she would leave it in good hands.

Ray inhaled, and let it all out.  She squeezed Belle’s hands one last time.  Then she let go of their hands, and stepped back.

“Thank you,” she said.  “I will not forget you.”

Belle laughed.

“Forget me if you wish,” they said.  “But don’t forget what I’ve told you.  Remember the helpers, my friend.”

Ray smiled, and she nodded.

Then, without worrying about what Belle might think, or who might be watching, Ray closed her eyes, and stepped away.

When she opened her eyes again, her sanctuary spread out before her.  The eternal springtime breeze rustled at her pigtails, and the smell of her vegetables filled the air.  She inhaled as all of the air of the old city left her in a rush, replaced with the air of home.

“Zarc,” she whispered.

She spun around and ran into the house.

Zarc laid on the bed exactly where she had left him.  Before she could even think to panic, she saw his chest rising and falling, with the same light dozing as usual.  He didn’t even seem to have had an episode during her absence.

Every bit of her gave out.  Her knees wobbled, and the whole of her journey crashed down onto her shoulders.  Seeing Zarc, alive and safe and untouched, was just too much on top. She sank to her knees at the side of his bed, pressed her face into his hand, and cried.

She did not know how long she cried.  Did not know how long she spent with the faces of those she’d met swirling through her mind.  While her lungs squeezed and choked with every hurtful thing she’d seen, every beautiful kindness she’d experienced.  She thought she might have babbled, perhaps, telling the Zarc who could not hear her of what she had seen, the people she had met, and the pain and joy she’d experienced.  But she did not remember the words after they passed her lips.

At some point, she could cry no further.  She laid with her head on Zarc’s hand, clinging to his fingers beneath her.  She stared up through the window near his bed, up at the familiar blue sky, to the universe she had made, the one she had once danced through.  But now, this was her whole world. This tiny, insignificant rock in the vastness of the cosmos — this was her home. But she could not decide if that was a thing to be celebrated...or a thing to mourn.

Her eyes caught on a glimmer of light from the sun, and she looked down.

Her lips parted.  Oh...she’d forgotten those were there.

The four gemstones, beautiful and shining, sat in the sunlight on the window sill, glittering like eyes looking at her.  Ray stared at them for a long time, at the solid chunks of her power, power she could no longer hold on her own.

_ Don’t try to hold the whole world on your own shoulders.  Look for the helpers. _

Faces once again swirled through Ray’s mind.  Elegy. Aria. Luscinia. Luna. The Guardians.  Belle.

_ Look for the helpers. _

Ray’s heavy eyes began to close, listening to Zarc’s soft and steady breaths.

_ All right,  _ she thought.   _ I’ll look. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap for this short prequel! Sorry for the lack of update yesterday, I started playing Deltarune and I got very distracted a;kljf;lsdfja.
> 
> Anyway, that'll be it for this chapter of the Lost Chapters of Arca. There will be more! I have a list of further short prequels based around several other characters from the story, and a handful of ""sequel"" chapters as well.
> 
> However, for my own sanity...I will be taking a short break from the world of Arca. Expect a new Lost Chapter to be posted the first Friday of December.
> 
> Thank you so much for following this story and this world, I cannot thank you all enough for being here and continuing to support this alternate universe I've spent so much time crafting <3 Thank you, and have a wonderful day!


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